File naming convention for document filing

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CC BY-SA 4.0

Description of a quick-to-learn, tried-and-tested storage and naming convention for storing invoices, insurance policies, letters, operating instructions, etc. in a flat hierarchy. Suitable for any operating system.

Introduction #

At the beginning of 2010, I started digitizing my office documents, book collection, operating instructions, letters, postcards, etc. and storing them digitally.

To do this, I came up with a naming convention and adapted and expanded it slightly over the years. My filing system and naming convention have been working well for 15 years now and have helped me in the most absurd situations during this time.

Over the past 4 years, I have advised friends, family, and even companies on how to sensibly proceed with naming documents for digital storage. Some of these people, who have completely adopted my system, rave about my approach. That’s how the idea for this article came about. I would like to explain to you here and show you with many examples how you can sensibly store documents with a suitable naming convention.

File storage convention #

Let me start with the File Storage Location Convention. This one will probably surprise you.

All documents end up in a single folder.

In my case, this folder is simply called “box”: ~/Documents/box/. There are no subfolders.

Advantages #

This system has proven itself. Even when used with, e.g. Dropbox, Google Drive, etc.

Possible limitations #

As a freelancer and employee, I have saved around 4,000 files (one to multi-page documents) using this system over the last 15 years. That corresponds to around 270 documents per year. By far, the largest file in my “box” takes up 122 Megabytes. It is a 372 pages strong PDF file.

As long as you deal with such manageable amounts of documents, which also have a reasonable size, you shouldn’t have any problems with modern file systems.

Amount of files per folder #

My file storage convention should be suitable for families, freelancers, small and medium-sized companies that have a "reasonable" volume of documents. Large companies should work with an extra layer of folder arrangements, for example for years (/box/2024/) or decades (/box/202*/).

File naming convention #

And now the juicy part. The actual naming convention by which I store my documents.

Parts of a file name #

Each file name may consist of the following pieces of information:

Writing convention #

All parts of a file name are …

DATE_TYPE_CREATOR_RECIPIENT_DESCRIPTION.FILE-EXTENSION

Document TYPE #

For the TYPE, I’m using a small set of predefined values:

Document RECIPIENT #

The RECIPIENT can be optional. If there is no RECIPIENT, leave the RECIPIENT out. For example, there is no RECIPIENT when storing an article from absurdistantimes.com about the US election results.

2024-11-06_article_absurdistan-times.com_us-election-results-2024

The same is true for a diary entry for the same day.

2024-11-06_john-doe_diary.txt

On the other hand, there is almost always a creator/issuer/sender for a document. Do not leave out the CREATOR.

Examples #

I will only list a few simple examples here.

2020-02-02_contract_gongshow-inc_john-doe_employment-contract.pdf
2024-02-28_letter_ellexis-snoop_john-doe_birthday-card.jpg

For a detailed list with more examples and real files, which you can download, visit the Naming Convention repository on GitHub.

Once you got the files, you can play around with them in your file browser. For example try to …

You will see how easy an intuitive it is to identify, sort, filter and find files.

Advantages #

Using the naming convention along with the storage convention has several advantages:

Possible limitations #

Amount of characters per file name #

All file systems support up to 255 character file names. The actual length depends on how many bytes a characters takes. There are some multibyte characters in Unicode.

The longest document name in my ~/Documents/box/ directory is 204 characters long. The second longest is 158 characters long. I have not managed to run into limitations.

Standardizations #

Character conversion #

When creating file names, be sure to convert the following characters. This will make it easier to search for files on the largest possible number of international keyboards.

CharConversion
äae
öoe
üue
ßss
äae
æae
œoe
øoe
åaa
ðeth
šs
žz
õoe
ëe
αalpha
$dollar
€euro
Illegal characters #

Avoid using the following special characters in file names. Apply character conversion or leave them out completely.

Example:

ExampleConversion
ACME, Inc.acme-inc

Further readings #

Sources and recommended, further resources on the topic:

Jonas Jared Jacek • J15k

Jonas Jared Jacek (J15k)

Jonas works as project manager, web designer, and web developer since 2001. On top of that, he is a Linux system administrator with a broad interest in things related to programming, architecture, and design. See: https://www.j15k.com/

License: File naming convention for document filing by Jonas Jared Jacek is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

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