Completely agree. Start with the mac OSX file system.
1 Like
Houdaspot is a souped up spotlight search for the Mac. Somewhat easier to use and very intuitive. This coupled with a robust naming system and Hazel to do the filing based on the name works for me.
The only real challenge I have at the moment is finding files that are in a shared cloud folder that isn’t replicated locally. This happens with a couple of work projects.
How do others handle mixed cloud/local files?
AFAIK, without a synced copy you are out of luck. Any chance you could sync to an external drive, if lack of local storage is the problem? This works well with Dropbox and Google Drive. But iCloud and OneDrive don’t support it.
After I retired I needed to go paperless since we were planning on a lot of extended travel in our motorhome and needed to have various files and records on the road. Since I already had a paper filing system that worked for me I just duplicated that in the file system. Top level is a folder named File Cabinet. Under it I have various topic folders like Vehicles, Real Estate, Financial, etc. Under those are finer divisions as needed. All files are saved as searchable PDFs with a filename in the form 2020_05_20 - Receipt for iPad Pro 11. Makes it easy to search. Originally I synced everything to Dropbox but have since switched to iCloud. I can get to all files from my iPad or iPhone. Finally I have more backups of this folder than I care to admit.
When I receive receipts or documents via web or email I save them as a PDF in the appropriate folder and named using the same template. I don’t use email as a filing system as it’s poorly designed for the task.
Based on suggestions from McSparky’s Paperless book, anything scanned goes into a folder named Action. Emails to be saved go into an Action mailbox. On a regular basis I file documents from the Action folders into the appropriate File Cabinet locations.
2 Likes
That is awesome - thank you very much.
Do you print your emails to PDF to then save in the filing cabinet locations?
Would make use of the iCloud that I am already paying for…
Yes, everything gets saved as a PDF for portability reasons. When I need to share something it’s easy to email and not worry about formatting.
For manuals I keep them in a separate folder. Didn’t put them into the file cabinet folder due to the large size of some of them. One car manual was over 250mb. I also didn’t need them as portable then but now have all my documents in iCloud.
Thanks @WayneG - unfortunately it is onedrive (but the sharepoint version so not locally synched) at the moment I just have to remember that the file was associated with ‘that’ work project and play ‘find the file’ in the project folder.
I suspect that hybrid cloud/local file search will be an ongoing issue until someone comes up with a ‘standard’ index format that can be shared with meta indexers (like Houdaspot) but I shudder at the security implications of that.