Bringing Order to Your
Digital Files

If you have been doing genealogy research for any length of time, you almost certainly have a folder somewhere on your computer called "Genealogy Stuff" — or possibly three of them, with slightly different names, in different locations, none of which contains everything you are looking for at any given moment. You are not alone in this. Virtually every genealogist, at some point, ends up with digital files scattered across their desktop, their downloads folder, their email attachments, and a USB drive they cannot locate. It is normal. It is also fixable, in one organised afternoon, if you have a clear system to implement.

✏️ Step One: A Naming Convention That Actually Works

The single most important thing you can do for your digital genealogy files is to adopt a consistent file naming convention and use it for every new file from this day forward. A naming convention is simply a rule for how you name files — a template that every file in your collection follows, so that any file, found anywhere, immediately tells you what it is without being opened.

In practice, this means that a scanned photograph of your great-grandmother Margaret Murphy, taken around 1890, becomes: 1890-00-00_Murphy_Margaret_Photograph.jpg — and the ship manifest recording her arrival in 1847 becomes: 1847-06-15_Murphy_Margaret_ShipManifest.pdf. Any time you cannot find something in your folder structure, you can use your computer's search function and type any part of this name — the surname, the document type, the year — and it appears immediately.

📁 Step Two: A Folder Structure You Can Maintain

Naming your files correctly is half the battle. The other half is knowing where to put them. A simple folder structure — a hierarchy of nested folders that groups related files together — means that both you and anyone who inherits your research can navigate it intuitively.

The three folders beginning with an underscore (_INBOX, _Family Tree Files, _ORIGINALS) sort to the top of the list alphabetically, keeping them easy to find. The _INBOX folder is particularly useful: when you download a new document, it goes into _INBOX first and gets properly sorted and renamed at your next organised session. This stops the "I'll deal with it later" pile from spreading to every corner of the folder structure.

🖥️ Step Three: Setting It Up — Right Now

☁️ Step Four: Cloud Storage — Your Safety Net

Once your files are organised on your computer, the most important next step is ensuring that a copy exists somewhere other than your computer. Hard drives fail. Computers get stolen. Fires and floods happen. A cloud storage backup — an automatic copy of your files kept on a secure server accessible from any device — is the simplest and most reliable protection against losing years of work in a single incident.

Any one of these options provides the basic cloud backup you need. For most researchers, Google Drive is the simplest starting point — particularly if you already use Gmail — because it backs up any type of file, requires no reorganisation of your existing folder structure, and is accessible from Windows, Mac, iPhone, and Android equally well.

Learn more about organizing digital genealogy files