Recommendations for File Naming Conventions

When deciding on naming conventions, the conventions should be agreed upon by the unit and communicated to staff. Consider documenting your naming conventions within your repository, either via on-screen instructions (if using an electronic system), a ‘Read Me’ file, or as part of your site plan. This will help ensure new users understand and follow the conventions. 

Although these guidelines are intended for use with electronic document management systems, many of the naming conventions rules can apply to storage on file shares. 

General recommendations

Keep file names short, but meaningful. Long file names mean long file paths and URLs which increase the likelihood of error, are more difficult to remember and recognise, and are more difficult to transmit in emails as they often 'break'. Most electronic systems also have a character limitation for URLs. Avoid using initialisms, abbreviations and codes that may not be commonly understood.

Avoid unnecessary repetition and redundancy in file names and file paths. For example, if the file is a PowerPoint presentation, you don’t need the word “presentation” in the filename. 

Use the underscore (_) as element delimiter. Do not use spaces or other characters such as: ! # $ % & ' @ ^ ` ~ + , . ; = ) (. The underscore (_) is a quasi-standard for field delimiting and is the most visually ergonomic character. Some search tools do not work with spaces and should be especially avoided for internet files. Depending on the system, spaces in filenames and folders can be problematic, which is why they should be avoided. This will depend on how the system creates a file path. SharePoint uses the file and folder name as part of the path and spaces will render as %20 which creates an unreadable URL. URL = protocol + server name + folder or file path + folder or file name+ parameters. Some standards recommend using capital letters to delimit words, not spaces or underscores (eg. FileWithNoSpaces.docx), however this will not be searchable. More details on filenames impact searchability below. 

Use the hyphen (-) to delimit words within an element or capitalize the first letter of each word within an element. Spaces are poor visual delimiters and some search tools do not work with spaces. The hyphen (-) is a common word delimiter. Alternatively, capitalizing the words within an element is an efficient method of differentiating words but is harder to read and may not be searchable.

When including a number in a file name always give it as a two-digit number. For example use 01-99, unless it is a year or another number with more than two digits. 

If using a date in the file name, be consistent. For example, always state the date ‘back to front’, and use four digit years, two digit months and two digit days: YYYYMMDD or YYYYMM or YYYY or YYYY-YYYY. This will ensure that files are sorted in proper chronological order with the most significant dates appearing first. Only use dates in a file name for things that need to be tracked by date, such as meetings, reports and other recurring events. Do not use dates as versioning in electronic document management systems. 

When including a personal name in a file name give the surname first. Then follow with initials or first name. The surname is the standard reference for retrieving records. Having the surname first will ensure that files are sorted in alphabetical order. 

Order the elements in a file name in the most appropriate way to retrieve the record. This will depend on the way you work. For example, if you work with student records you may want to use lastname-firstname_studentID_documentType since you are more likely to browse by name. If you are organizing meeting agendas or minutes you may want to start with the date.

If using an electronic document management system, do not put versions in the filename. Only do this if you need to maintain each version of a record as a separate record. Versioning will be maintained within the electronic document management system. The whole point of electronic document management is that you no longer have to maintain multiple versions of a file to show its history. You can go back to a specific version or date and view the state of the file at that time. For this reason, you do not need to put dates or version numbers in the filename. 

The filename remains the same for the life of the document. It will not change when you upload new versions, so if you hardcode a version number or a date in the name, it may become out of date the next time an update is made. 

Avoid putting personal or confidential information in a filename. An example of this is: JSmith_termination.docx. Administrators or unauthorized users may be able to view file names. This may conflict with guideline 1, which is to keep names meaningful so the right balance needs to be determined for the organization. Perhaps some aspects could be flagged as a property instead of directly in the name so they are less evident.   

To combat this, most document management systems provide two key document properties: Title and Filename. Your title should be in plain language and provide guidance on the content. The title provides more information about the document, not only in search, but when users browse through the folders.  

The filename can follow whatever naming conventions you’ve established (see above). By default, the title will be empty, so it is important to manually add in a user friendly plain language title during upload (or later by editing properties). If you have title already populated in the document properties, the system should extract that during upload. 

You can also set the title in any MS Office or PDF document by going to the file properties. It’s a good idea to populate this field even for file share storage as it will improve searchability. 

 

Figure 1 MS Office document properties 

Improve Search-ability 

Electronic document management systems will index all your metadata fields (title, filename, description, etc.) and the contents of your document to be retrieved in Search. This is why it is important to think about the user when naming documents. In most cases, search is looking for a keyword string match. 

In SharePoint, the title field is the most important field for ranking in search results. A keyword in the title field will be returned higher than a keyword used within the body text.  

There is debate about whether to use underscore (_), hyphen (-), or capitals to delimit words in a filename. There is no right or wrong answer; hyphens and underscores will increase the length of your filepath, so are not recommended for long file names. However, eliminating spaces and using capitals to delimit words will create run-on names that will not be matched in Search. 

Example: filename approval_workflow.vsdx 

Search will interpret underscores and hyphens as a space so in this example a search for “approval” or “workflow” would match this record.  

Example: filename OrgChart-VPRIExec_20160421  

Search is looking for a string match. In this example, a search for “organization chart” would not find this document because those words do not occur in the content or filename. The exact string is “orgchart” which someone is unlikely to search by. However, if I had “VPRI Organization Chart” in my title, the record would still be found. 

As long as you have a title in plain language, the file naming can be flexible. Whatever convention you chose, it should be consistent throughout the library. 

In some cases, you may also provide an additional description about the document. This is also searchable. Remember, the whole point of electronic document management is to help users find information faster.