Get Organized: File Management Tools

Managing files and folders is not only limited to your shelves or drawers but in fact plays a very important role in the digital world. Data or files scattered on your hard drive will definitely have you pulling your hair when the need arises. In addition to this most of us also have the tendency to save the same files over and over again in different locations thereby increasing redundancy. This in fact adds up to space being unnecessarily consumed by files that are actually not required. Honestly speaking you wouldn’t know as to how much space you could actually recover, but that would require you to go through the contents of every folder.

There are a number of tools that one could make use of, but choosing the most appropriate tool makes a lot of difference. For instance, let’s say you don’t have a search tool and make use of Windows search. It would actually take a while to locate a file. Wouldn’t it be better if you had an application that could locate the file in seconds? So here is a list of tools that will not only help you search for what you’re looking for faster but will also allow you to find duplicate files, organize (from photos to videos to music) and allow you to rename multiple files at the press of a button.

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Finding Duplicates
One of the easiest tools that you can get your hands on is the application called Easy Duplicate Finder. It’s easy to use and has an interface that cannot get any simpler. You have the file explorer towards the top left corner of the screen while you can add folders and drives that need scanning towards the right. The program also provides predefined “Scan filters” for specific file types such as Office, Music, Video, Web and many more to narrow down the search. File sizes can also be defined to make it even more specific. Other than this, you could also try applications such as Double killer, Duplicate Cleaner or MultiFind. However, we strongly recommend that you use Easy Duplicate Finder.

Renaming Batch Files
Renaming multiple files can be a real pain especially when you have a handful of them to rename. For those of you who are avid photographers would actually know the amount of effort that goes into renaming multiple files. Now as the name suggests Batch File Rename is not only a renaming tool but in fact it does much more. There are a list of options that you can add which include Space, Date/Time, Path name and even Text. In addition to this you can also choose to remove spaces, text and numbers. All in all, this little tool is highly customizable and it’s totally free.

File Searching Tools
When it comes to searching for files on your PC there is absolutely nothing that can go up against Google’s Desktop Search. It seamlessly indexes files in the background once the machine is idle. Anything and everything can be indexed while a few selected file types can also be disabled. The option of excluding certain files, folders or drives is also thrown in. Searching for a particular file cannot get easier than this. Simply type the file name in the search bar and you will find it in seconds. There is absolutely nothing beyond this marvelous search tool.

File Organizing Tools
There are a whole list of organizers such as Picasa for photo management, Beyond Compare for analyzing/comparing the contents of two different folders/text/data/picture etc. For music (and probably a few videos) management there is always iTunes and Windows’ own Media Player (preferably Media Player 11). Last but not the least is the Directory List and Print. This fine little program allows you to scan directories and displays the final result either in Excel format or Word thereby giving you a very straightforward and simple view the folder contents.

If you have any more suggestions, we’d love to hear them.

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