Ten Ways to Save Time by Organizing My Documents and Start Menu

If your My Document and Favorites are huge messy conglomerations of files, showing the effects of several half-hearted attempts to get organized, you need this website.  A couple hours invested now will save you more than that in just one month, and prevent catastrophes like losing important documents.  If your computer is pretty well organized but could use a tune-up,  you should enjoy this site.  If you're very well organized, look here for a couple new ideas, and share your own best ideas.*   Click on each topic below to learn more.

Download a free My Documents prototype, and learn how to migrate from your old one One very cool thing you can do is combine Favorites and My Documents  Eliminate extra menu levels and extraneous menu items  Download a free Start Menu prototype, and learn how to migrate from your old one Use your Desktop only for quick access to active topics, projects, and documents Use shortcuts to catalog files and folders under several subjects/ideas  Shortcuts to websites can be in the Start Menu   Create an Archives folder and move old stuff there to keep My Documents manageable  Create a folder My Documents\Inbox, and put new stuff there until you’ve decided what to do with it Save Favorites Fast!

*If you have a My Documents or Start Menu\Programs folder structure you particularly like, maybe you’d send it to me.  I want to collect them and learn what the best have in common, etc.  You can send me your structure (structure only – no contents) using the tree command in the cmd window.  Click here to see how.

These suggestions are independent of which OS version you're using, but the detailed explanations use the facilities of Windows XP.  If you're running something else, details may be different.  First detail: all folder directories are shown in Explorer, in View > Details mode; you should setup that way too.

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