Do you organize you photos by date or the place they were taken? How about your income tax papers? Everyone has their own way of organizing things. Organizing helps you to find your stuff as quickly as possible, and you can use File Manager to organize your digital files and folders.

Three basic ways to organize your files and folders in the File Manager are sorting, grouping, and changing your view. Understanding the differences between these options will help you customize and combine them to your liking.

Sort your files

Sorting will reorder your files. Generally, files are listed in alphabetical order by file name. But sometimes you need to order your files based on other file properties. For example, if you're viewing a list of different file types, sorting them by “Type” may make more sense than ordering by name.

To sort your files
  • 1. Click on a folder you want to sort.
  • 2. Right-click an empty space, point to Sort by, and then click a property (such as Type).

Group Your Files

In addition to sorting, you can also group files by property. If you choose to ‘Group By’ option, there will be a distinct separation between your files and they will be sorted under sub-headings according to the criteria you set. So, if you have a folder full of different type of files, you might want to group them by date to separate them by the date they were created.

To group your files by property
  • 1. Click on a folder you want to Group files.
  • 2. Right-click an empty space, point to Group by, and then click a property (such as Type).

If you want to remove the grouping separation in a folder, just right-click an empty space, point to Group by, and then click (None).

Change the appearance of your files (View)

In addition to changing how your files are organized, you can also change how they appear.

To change your view
  • 1. Click on a folder.
  • 2. On the toolbar, click the arrow next to the Views button, and then select the desired view.

If you mix view options with different arrange, sort, or group options, you can create some interesting and helpful combinations.