David Cox: Hey folks, today I'm going to teach you how to organize
all your documents on all of your devices with insane efficiency.
While my tutorials tend to normally focus on the Apple ecosystem, I
am happy to report that this trick works on every single platform.
How to organize your documents with insane efficiency.
Coming up next on Tech Talk America.
Hey folks, and welcome to the class.
Let me give you an idea of how this works.
We're going to treat your documents folder, like we're renovating a closet.
And what's the first thing you have to do anytime you renovate?
You have to clean everything out and put it into temporary storage.
Next, you install your organizational structure so that all of your
stuff has a place to live.
Finally, in the last steps, we'll relocate your stuff back into that structure.
We're also going to take things to the next level by creating shared
folders for trusted family members.
That way you all have equal access to important documents like
family recipes, medical records.
Power of attorney, et cetera.
There are a ton of tips and tricks that are packed into this video, so
make sure you watch till the end.
At this point, let's dive into the tutorial portion of this video.
As I mentioned a moment ago, the first step is to clean house.
So wherever your junk situation exists, whether it's your documents folder or the
desktop, I want you to create a new folder called to be organized and then dump
all of those files into that location.
Now that everything's cleaned out, this is the part where we
need to create a folder structure.
So at this point, I'll give you two options.
You can either spend the next 90 minutes manually creating something that resembles
the structure that I'm about to show you.
Or for the price of one latte, you can download it preassembled from my website
and be up and running in two seconds.
Just head over to TechTalkAmerica.Com and if you scroll down just
a little bit on the homepage, you'll see the big buy now button.
And yes, we do accept Apple pay.
After your purchase, you'll be brought here to WeTransfer, where
you'll download a small zipped file.
Then open up this folder and move the contents into your documents folder.
At this point, let's take a look at this folder structure.
The first thing I'd like to point out is there are three folders that
are tagged in red that are designed to be turned into shared folders.
There's one for immediate family members, which contains important
files like a power of attorney letter.
And I always like to highlight that one in particular because you never
know when you're going to need it.
And if you don't have easy access to it, people are literally suffering
because you're not organized.
There's also shared folders for pet sitters as well as babysitters.
And if you go into either of those folders, you'll find a simple form
that you can fill out that contains the most important information that a
babysitter or pet sitter would need.
If we go into finance, you'll see that this template is multiple levels deep.
There truly is a place for everything.
And obviously, if there's any categories that aren't relevant
to you, just delete them.
At this point, I have a bunch of little tricks that I want to
teach you to help you move your stuff back into this Organized
Documents folder with efficiency.
Some of these tips are for desktop users, others are for those
of you who only own an iPad.
For those of you who are Mac users, here's a little tip.
When you're moving your files back into the documents folder, what I
recommend you do is open up your to be organized folder, put it into list
view, which in case you didn't know is command two, then go to the file menu
and open up a second finder window, and then navigate to the documents folder.
Now I want you to hover your cursor over the green dot at the top left to reveal
the option to enable split screen mode.
Now we'll need to click on the other visible finder window
so that they're side by side.
Another tip I wanted to give you is when you're dealing with my
organized structure, you'll have your best experience if you keep
it in list view or column view.
And again, list view is command two and column view is command three.
And as you can see from this view, it's really easy to drag and drop files from
the left into the structure on the right.
If you don't own a Mac, but you do own an iPad, don't worry, you can still do
everything just fine from only an iPad.
Of course, it all starts with buying my zipped file from the website, and when you
get to WeTransfer, it's going to ask you to save the file to the Downloads folder.
Now, let's switch over to the Files app.
You see here where it says Favorites?
If your Documents folder doesn't show up in that location, trust
me, you're going to want to add it.
To do that, let's go to iCloud Drive.
And now you can drag and drop the Documents folder into the sidebar.
Let's now go back to the zip file, which is in the Downloads folder.
To unzip a file on an iPad, just tap on it.
Now if we go into that folder, we can select all of the contents, and
then tap Move, and move it easily into the main Documents folder.
To enable split screen mode on your iPad, From the Files app, we're
going to drag our finger up from the bottom just a teeny tiny little
bit so that it reveals the dock.
Now, we're going to drag the Files icon over to the left or
right of the screen, and just like that, you have split screen mode.
Once again, I'm going to change up the view options to make dragging and
dropping these files a little bit easier.
For my to be organized folder, I'm going to change the view settings to
list mode, and for my other window, I'm going to change it into column layout.
And as you can see, it's significantly easier to drag and drop those files
from one destination to another.
To make the red tagged folders shared folders, just click on each
so that it's highlighted, then click on the share button at the top.
And depending on which folder you're dealing with, and who you're sending
it to, you might want to send it as a copy or you can collaborate.
Now I can send authorization through several methods.
Personally, I like to do it via text message.
Here's a few other little tips to keep in mind.
If you come across a file and you don't know what it is, or
if you think that it might be a duplicate, don't double click on it.
Just click on it once so that it's highlighted and then tap the
space bar to launch quick look.
If you determine that the file is to be deleted, you can use hotkey command delete
to send the file directly to the trash.
To move quickly to the next file, just tap the down arrow.
If this video helped you, please take a quick moment and let me know about
it down below in the comments section.
Be sure to hit that like button.
And if you haven't already done so, please subscribe.
Thank you so much for watching everyone.
This is David A.
Cox with Tech Talk America.
Class dismissed.