dacs.doc electric

Not So Random Access
Episode II

by Bruce Preston

Note: I have been moderating the General Meeting's Random Access sessions since January 1995 - we rarely have meetings canceled, yet here we are with two in a row cancelled due to bad weather. Last month I did a substitute article on getting your machine to start and run faster, and jokingly subtitled it "Episode 1". Little did I know! This month, since we again didn't have a Q&A session, I thought I'd do an article on organizing information within your PC. How you do it is pretty much a personal choice - you may prefer something else. What follows works for me... Last weekend I did an annual project - I did the first cut on the income taxes. When I first did my taxes BPC (Before PC) I had all of my records gathered in the proverbial shoe box. Since then I have discovered the power of organizing everything into a tax folder in the desk drawer, which in turn has manila folders for such things as the various 1099s, receipts, etc. It made getting information into the tax preparation program much faster. In the days PPC (Pre-PC) days, when the operating system of choice was CP/M, we were limited to eight characters for a filename, with a three-character "extension" that indicated the type of file. When the first IBM PC came out with DOS 1.0 (yes, there actually was such a thing!) it had the same naming conventions. DOS 2.0 added a concept lifted from Unix - that of directories and subdirectories - which in the GUI (graphical user interface) environment we now know as "folders." However, folders were still constrained by the limitations on filenames the "8 dot 3" format. Windows, through versions, 3.x was built over DOS, so it, too, had the "8 dot 3" file name/directory name restrictions. Windows 95 made the breakthrough which permitted long filenames. That's the good news - the bad news is that with the Office 95 products, Microsoft also started the convention of having their products default to a single folder - usually "C:\My Documents" for all of their application documents (what we used to call "files"). To me this was a giant step backwards, comparable to stuffing all of your papers into the shoebox. It didn't take long before your "C:\My Documents" folder was brimming with files of every type, and even though you could give your files a long name, you soon ended up with lots of similarily named files all named "Proposal" or "Invoice" or "Expenses" etc. My recommendation is to abandon the "C:\My Documents" convention and establish a hierarchy of folders. Figure 1 is a screen shot of Windows Explorer displaying the folder structure on my C: drive. You will note that I have a folder named "Clients", and within this folder I have a subfolder for each of my clients. Within each client's folder I have additional subfolders as needed which organize the files or documents as to what they are. Even some of these folders, such as "Projects" and "Source Code" may have sub-folders, as evidenced by the "+" icon to the left of the folder. For most applications, you may control the default folder where the application starts looking for a file the default for Microsoft products is usually "C:\My Documents". You can usually change the default by using Tools from the main menu, then Options, and then File Locations or Default Directory. Keen-eyed readers may notice that I use WordPerfect you can change its defaults via Tools, Settings, Files. Having made the change, when I do a File / Open, I get something like this (figure 2): From here it is trivial to select the appropriate client, then the appropriate sub-folder (such as Correspondence, or Invoices, etc). and find or create the appropriate file. Opening a new file works the same way. Notice in the FILE / NEW dialog box (figure 3) the icon that looks like a folder with a "sparkle" on the corner - this button lets you create a new folder in the current folder so if you need to create a new client, for example, you just click this when in the "Clients" folder, type in the name of the client, and you are ready to go. There are four folder navigation aids in the file dialog box. From left to right they are "the drop down box", which is very similar to the left window of Windows Explorer, the "Go up one level in the folder structure" button, the "Go to my favorites folder" button, and the "Create a new folder" button. You would use the "Go up" button if you were currently positioned in a specific client's folder and want to go back to the containing "Clients" folder. From the "Clients" folder you could "go up" to the root of the C: drive. The important thing to realize here is that you do not have to use Windows Explorer (and then the sequence File/New) to create a new folder! The same organizational principles can be used in your e-mail reader as well. Figure 4 is a screen shot of a corner of my e-mail program, Eudora Pro: It should look vaguely familiar in addition to the In, Out, and Trash folders, I also have a container folder named "Clients" which in turn has a sub-folder for each client. Within the client's sub-folder are In and Out boxes, which contain the file copies of those messages that I have elected to save. Actually, this is a bit redundant, as you can tell from the listing line in the mailboxes whether it is a received or sent message by whether the line is displayed in italics. The point I would like to make here is that you can quite nicely organize your e-mail as well. You can move messages between folders, such as Inbox folder and a client's Inbox folder by drag- and-drop. All of this is applicable for Outlook Express and other mail programs as well. The method for creating folders varies from mail program to mail program. For Eudora, you right-click on the folder into which you want to insert the new folder, then select NEW. Do you know that if you are in a FILE OPEN or FILE SAVE dialog box, you can usually right-click on a file in the list of files and select such things as RENAME, or DELETE, etc.? Again, you don't have to be in Windows Explorer to do these things. Epilogue: Last month I mentioned StartStop - a freeware utility that can be used to control what gets started when you boot your machine. Since then I have examined it, and even installed it on several of my client's machines. We all love it. This month I would also like to mention Xteq Systems' X-Setup 5.6 who have published a freeware "super tweak" utility that controls many of those little customiz-able-if-you-knew-where- to-find-it items in Windows. Unlike Tweak-UI which had specific versions for Windows 95, Windows 98, etc., this application works with everything from Windows 95 through Windows 2000 and Windows Me. Give it a try.