Each New Year teams find that their files are no longer organized as they intended because of how dates are formatted in filenames. Some of you will be quick to highlight that there is a date field in the detailed view of file folders. For many this is a good way to sort files in folders. Others like to build deep hierarchies of folders with separate year folders to put files in. If you have a system that is working for you, keep using it.
There are still many of us that put dates in filenames, want a single folder that we can link to from our Quick Access, and need it to sort between years. I've tried several different formats of dates in filenames. The one that works and has been adopted without any training is YYYY-MM-DD.
I prefer a flat hierarchy to my folders. I would rather have many files in a single folder than deep layers of folders in folders where I have to keep opening folders over and over to find my files. This requires a Naming Convention for the folder to establish groupings and organization within the folder. The risk to this approach is when other users don't follow the naming convention, which is usually because they don't recognize it in the other filenames in the folder.
When developing a Naming Convention, break the filename into elements. Elements should work from general to specific since an alphabetical sort of the files will start with the first elements and move to the right in grouping files. Also have some sort of separator between elements so users can recognize the individual elements and come up with new filenames using the same elements, in the same order.
Whether the date is the first element or an embedded element, the YYYY-MM-DD format follows this general to specific pattern. All the 2021 files will be grouped together. Then within the 2021 group, the January (01) files will be grouped together. And the January 2022 (2022-01) files will not be mixed together.
Americans typically write the short date as M/D/YY. In filenames the slash (/) has other meanings, so users will simply replace the slash with a dash (-) and use M-D-YY. This breaks down pretty quickly as 1-12-22 comes before 1-3-22. Then it is changed to a two-digit day with 1-03-22 sorted properly before 1-12-22. This works until October when 10-03-22 comes before 8-25-22. Usually instead of going back and renaming nine months worth for files, people will typically start creating month folders. If they are top of their game the folders are "01-January", "02-February" to keep them organized. [Quick Tip: the <F2> key makes it easy and fast to rename several files in a folder.]
After fixing errors in October with two-digit months, there is another three months of smooth sailing until 01-03-23 gets mixed in with 01-12-22. There are so many things that change or start fresh with a new year that year folders and hierarchy levels are created. One of my issues with creating year folders is that for three months it is a hassle to go back a month or two or three to look for recent files. I would like a way in January to see last month's files without having to change folders.
Now if you're using MM-DD-YY, you realize that you want to switch to YY-MM-DD. I've tried this. The problem is when an American sees 22-01-15, they don't recognize it as 1/15/22 or 1/15/22. Several people will see three two-digit numbers and assume it is MM-DD-YY, even though there is no 22nd month. This was even worse from 2001 to 2012.
I have also tried dates without separators. Sometimes 012421 is recognized as a date. Rarely will anyone recognize 220124 as a date. Even 20220124 doesn't get seen as a date. These start looking like serial numbers and users don't see them as part of the Naming Convention. They become random numbers. That is when they have a better idea, and that is to include a date in the filename. They will often do something like M-D-YY for their files.
I've worked on enough projects and built enough shared network folders that I've tried all the variations discussed so far. It wasn't until I included separators and four-digit years that I noticed other users could recognize and follow the Naming Convention. There is something about 2022-01-22 that people recognize. The four-digit year jumps off the screen and even though it isn't typical to see a year first, people recognize it. Once they recognize that, they can parse the rest of the numbers because of temporal context.
After I started using YYYY-MM-DD as the date format for filenames, most people would follow suit. I still get folks who haven't worked on long projects or had long duration folders that go back to M/D/YY formats. I continue to set the example--and sometimes write long blog posts to explain the mistakes I've made in the past.
