Genérico

I've recently made the switch from Palm to Pocket PC (Axim X50v), and I'm struggling with organizing my data such that I can actually find stuff.

For example, I've got a couple of hundred notes and scrolling through a flat list is less than ideal (I can't always remember the title of what I'm looking for, so alphabetical order doesn't help). With a half-dozen categories on my Palm, it was easier to find things.

I have the same problem with Pocket Word -- I've been trying to move some of my notes over to that, but the organizational woes continue there.

I don't get the "Show" drop-down either. "All Folders" gets me a huge list of stuff, but if I want to pick another folder to narrow things, there are something like 4 screenfuls of folders that for applications, settings, and who knows what else.

How do I get a nice tidy "My Documents" type arrangement where I see only documents and subfolders that I created, and can organize things in them? Are there better ways?

RobertCF

The majority of folders you see listed when you bring up Notes or Pocket Word are (or should be) folders that are WITHIN the My Documents folder. If you have a bunch that are not, then you should create whatever folders you need within My Documents and move the notes and Word documents to them. Then, when you click on the drop list of folders the list of folders you'll see will only be folders that you have Notes or Word files in....which should obviously be ones within My Documents.

The purpose behind how they have it on the PocketPCs is so that you don't have to navigate a ton of folders (whether they are on the PDA or on a SD or CF card) to find files. You simply need to create the folders you need---like categories. On mine I have folders within My Documents for Personal, Business, Church, etc. I click on the drop list and choose Business and I see all the notes I stored there...nothing else until I go back and choose All Folders.

Although Outlook does support categories, Pocket Outlook, as far as I can tell, does not. I'd imagine some of the fine folks who use Pocket Informant or some of the other third-party PIMs may be able to tell you if full category support exists in those apps. Personally, I find folders much easier and more intuitive to use than categories (with the exception of Contacts, which Pocket Outlook does support categories for them).

ebelen1

Originally Posted by Genérico

I've recently made the switch from Palm to Pocket PC (Axim X50v), and I'm struggling with organizing my data such that I can actually find stuff. For example, I've got a couple of hundred notes and scrolling through a flat list is less than ideal (I can't always remember the title of what I'm looking for, so alphabetical order doesn't help). With a half-dozen categories on my Palm, it was easier to find things. I have the same problem with Pocket Word -- I've been trying to move some of my notes over to that, but the organizational woes continue there. I don't get the "Show" drop-down either. "All Folders" gets me a huge list of stuff, but if I want to pick another folder to narrow things, there are something like 4 screenfuls of folders that for applications, settings, and who knows what else. How do I get a nice tidy "My Documents" type arrangement where I see only documents and subfolders that I created, and can organize things in them? Are there better ways?

As far as Notes, I just categorize my notes in Outlook. Upon syncing my PPC with my PC, the notes come over in the same categories/folders. For example, I have folders named Quotes, Business, Personal, etc.

Genérico

Originally Posted by RobertCF

The majority of folders you see listed when you bring up Notes or Pocket Word are (or should be) folders that are WITHIN the My Documents folder. If you have a bunch that are not, then you should create whatever folders you need within My Documents and move the notes and Word documents to them. Then, when you click on the drop list of folders the list of folders you'll see will only be folders that you have Notes or Word files in....which should obviously be ones within My Documents. The purpose behind how they have it on the PocketPCs is so that you don't have to navigate a ton of folders (whether they are on the PDA or on a SD or CF card) to find files. You simply need to create the folders you need---like categories. On mine I have folders within My Documents for Personal, Business, Church, etc. I click on the drop list and choose Business and I see all the notes I stored there...nothing else until I go back and choose All Folders. Although Outlook does support categories, Pocket Outlook, as far as I can tell, does not. I'd imagine some of the fine folks who use Pocket Informant or some of the other third-party PIMs may be able to tell you if full category support exists in those apps. Personally, I find folders much easier and more intuitive to use than categories (with the exception of Contacts, which Pocket Outlook does support categories for them).

I guess my problem is that all the folders in "Built-In Storage" also show up in the folder list in addition to what is in "My Documents". Since I've installed most of my applications to Built-In Storage, I get a bunch of folders that I don't care about. And in the case of Pocket Word, it shows any documents associated with those application folders (release notes, license agreements, etc.)

I'm happy with the idea of folders to organize, and I do have those. It's just all the other junk that I'd like to be rid of.

jdh1415

i organized with
folders folders folders folders folders and a few more.

Gerard Samija

I've used various Pocket PCs since spring of 2000, and by summer of that year I'd abandoned the list views of Pocket Word and other Microsoft apps. Nearly useless.

Instead, I sort by gross subject into subfolders in My Documents - whether in main memory or in a card - then refined subject into subfolders of those dozen or so folders, then subfolders of those... I guess maybe JDH means something like this? Using a proper file explorer, with a split-screen view of folders above and contained files below makes browsing/searching for documents easy. TotalCommanderCE or FtpView are both excellent, and of course there's the very capable Resco. I use all those, prefering some over others for different job types. TotalCommander has the most efficient Find function of all I've tested. There are lots of other file explorers, and you'll find a lot of people advocating every one of them. Whichever you like, it'll be better than Microsoft's. Odd, considering that the Explorer thing on my PC (Win98SE) isn't too bad at all.

DanmanX

Usually like directories of "pictures" and "music" and "games". That's about the simplest way to do it!

I rarely use My Documents for my personal files except for those in there by default.

Genérico

I thought about creating a subfolder in My Documents (My Real Documents), which would be easy to pick from Pocket Word's folder list, and then organize things into category folders under that, but then I ran into the semi-enforced one-folder-deep limitation for My Documents.

Then I thought about moving all of the installed applications in my built-in storage into a subfolder (Program Files seemed like a logical place), so that all those folders wouldn't show up cluttering the top-level folder list in Pocket Word. But given that you can't really control where programs get installed to, and you can't be sure that just moving programs will allow them to continue running, that didn't seem like a good plan either.

Finally I've settled on creating folders in My Documents for _Business, _Family, _Personal, etc. such that they sort at the top of the folder list. This strikes me as a fairly ugly if tolerable hack, though.

Genérico

Originally Posted by DanmanX

Usually like directories of "pictures" and "music" and "games". That's about the simplest way to do it! I rarely use My Documents for my personal files except for those in there by default.

Where do you put them then? Do you not ever use the Pocket Word or Notes folder list? Do you not synchronize them to your desktop machine?

Gerard Samija

Originally Posted by Genérico

... But given that you can't really control where programs get installed to, and you can't be sure that just moving programs will allow them to continue running, that didn't seem like a good plan either.

Not so, at all. Microsoft has written a couple of little registry strings making sure that no install location requestor pops up during the unpacking of CAB files, but this can easily be corrected. Of course the My Documents limitation which is so deeply embedded system-wide holds here as well, so one must also implement a circumvention such as using gsGetFile.dll to allow browsing to any location for creating an installation folder. I've written it up fairly thoroughly here:
http://vancouverpocketpc.com/CAB_ins...ion_tweak.html

I don't know if this applies when installing from a PC via Activesync... I rarely use that, and when I must it's not for installing a CAB as I use those directly on the device, but for something like TextMaker where no CAB file is available. It would seem likely that the tweaks would apply however, as most PC-based installations to a PPC involve the automated copying-over of a CAB file, which is then unpacked by the local handler.

The folder display bug seems a hard one to cope with, for those who bother with that function in applications like Pocket Word. I find it useless, always have, as being too slow to run through... and with the more recent PPC OS versions it's become buggy in a new way, not displaying all available folders. So I still recommend just browsing for files by carefully organised folder heirarchy, using a sensible file explorer with a two-pane view for speed of searching. Resco, TotalCommanderCE's two-window or virtual two-window modes, FtpView, there are lots of options better than Microsoft's feeble File Explorer.