IT-Tip: Naming Conventions

Uniform naming of items in a shared file folder is useful to avoid confusion and overlap with items. Naming conventions allows you to find backed-up items more frequently and, above all, more quickly.

Especially when using network drives or cloud systems, cross-platform errors (eg: synchronization, display) can be avoided!

5 best practices for file naming conventions

  • Keep file names short, but meaningful
  • Avoid special characters and spaces
  • Use consistent, relevant elements
  • Logical file organization

1. Keep file names short but meaningful

Your file names should be as short as possible, but still have enough meaning to distinguish them from similar files.

2. Avoid special characters

Be sure to avoid special characters and spaces in your file names, as these are sometimes defined as functions in operating systems and cause problems when saving and searching for files.

Background:
MacOS or Linux allow certain special characters that are not allowed under Windows

Special characters:
* : \ / < > | " ? [ ] ; = + & £ $ € ä ö ü ß é ""

3. Use uniform, relevant elements

Using too many elements could cause technical problems. The order of elements in the file name should relate to the importance of that information, and the order should also be consistent between files.

Example:
"[DATE]_[DESCRIPTION]_[VERSION NUMBER]_[AUTHOR]"
20221025 _NamingConvention_v3_konczalla.pdf

4. Logical file organization

Files should not only be named logically, but also organized logically. This includes clear naming of folders. Your folder structure should also make sense to someone who is not familiar with the project. Keep folder names short, avoiding any special characters, spaces, or separators. Make sure the structure is stretched out in width, rather than length.

Background:
The string of file paths is limited to a length of 256 characters in Windows. A too long path (= results from folder path and file name) leads to the fact that files can no longer be opened/deleted, or whole folders are no longer displayed.

It is important that you document the given guidelines and pass them on to the other employees - this is the only way to make this measure effective!