Sorting Saturday ~ How I Organize My Digital Files

Organizing your digital files is so important.  It is so easy to misplace important files in the abyss of your hard drive!  Not to mention having your files properly organized makes it so much easier to back up your data to the cloud or an external hard drive for safe keeping.

When I first started adding my genealogy records onto my computer, I tested out a few different file systems to see what worked for me the best.

I store all of my genealogical data in my Dropbox folder.  I love Dropbox because it makes backing up your data so simple and it's easy to access your data from another computer.

Dropbox folder for genealogy files

In my Dropbox folder I have a sub folder called Genealogy.  In this folder I keep sub folders for my correspondence copies, history books, photos, my RootsMagic back up files and working files and surnames.


Inside the surnames folder I create a folder for each person the tree belongs to.  I have one for my tree, my hubby's tree and any other friends I might be helping with their research.


Inside each of these folders I break the lines down with surname folders.  Inside each surname folder I give each family group their own folder.  Inside these I make folders for birth, marriage, death, and any other fact that I have images or documents for.  I store all documents created before a persons marriage in their parents folders.


I find this system works really well for me.  I can quickly find any record by going straight to the persons family group folder.
Currently I've been keeping my genealogy photos separate from the records collections.  I've been thinking it might be simpler if I merged these together by adding a photos sub folder to each family group that I have genealogical records for.  I haven't fully made up my mind yet.

How do you organize your digital genealogy files?

If your not currently using Dropbox to backup your files and would like to try it out, using my affiliate link will give each of us an extra 500 MB of free space, on top of the 2 GB of free space they start you with.  I receive no payment of any kind from Dropbox other than the extra free space, I'm just a very happy user.  Thank you!



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