5 March 2008

Note to Self: Do my Filing

Keeping up with your filing is one of the most important things you can do to keep yourself organized. There is nothing worse than madly looking on your desk and wracking your brain wondering where that piece of paperwork is. Especially when your boss needs it urgently. Having a good workable filing system and an organized and uncluttered desk is critical to keeping and staying organized.

Maintaining an up-to-date file list is also a necessary tool to keep everything in order. It shouldn’t be too complicated and should be something that others could look at and use. Sometimes things happen and someone has to fill in for you, so you want something easy to follow.

The Miscellaneous File

There are some things in your physical files as well as your electronic files that just don’t seem to have a home. They tend to get put in the Miscellaneous file and that is OK as long as you are consistent and always put that type of thing in there.

Electronic Filing

You also need to keep your electronic filing systems organized. Especially as we look to a paperless society we need to keep our folders and subfolders organized in our document management system and in Outlook. But all is not lost if we can’t remember where it is filed, because in Outlook and in most document management systems we can search all folders and still come up with our document. So in that sense, filing electronically has its advantages.
When filing electronically, the name of the document and key words become important to finding documents and if you can save by file number that narrows the search down even further.

Outlook Tip when searching for E-mails

In Outlook (2007) in the Search field there is a drop-down menu. Choose ``Search All Mail Items``. Type what you are looking for and Outlook will search in all your folders.
What a great tool when you can`t remember where you filed an e-mail.

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