Folders answer “where does this belong”. They are bad at “where is the thing I had yesterday”. These three cover the rest.
Starred is yours
A star is private to you. Starring a file does not star it for anybody else, and nobody can see what you starred.
Use it for the handful you open constantly — the letterhead, the current price list, the template you start every document from. Five or six. A hundred starred files is just another folder.
Tags are shared
A tag is on the file, so everybody who can see the file sees the tag. Each one carries a colour and a count in the left rail.
Tags earn their keep on the things that cut across folders. A contract lives in the client’s folder, a supplier contract in Finance, an employment contract in HR — all three tagged contract, and one click finds every contract in the business.
| Good tags | Bad tags |
|---|---|
| Contract, Policy, Template | One per client — that is what folders and records are for. |
| Confidential | One per year — the date is already on the file. |
| Client work, Brand | One per file type — so is the extension. |
Agree the tag list once, out loud, with the people who will use it. Left to itself it becomes contract, Contract, contracts and agreement within a month, and then it is worse than nothing.
Search
One box, covering name, tag and owner together. So “the thing Priya uploaded” is a search, not an archaeology exercise.
It only ever searches what you can already see. A file somebody has not shared with you does not appear, and no count includes it.
And Recent
What you have touched lately, which answers the commonest question of all: where is the thing I had open this morning.
A tag list that survives
Tags fail in one predictable way: everybody invents their own, and within a month you have four words for the same thing. The fix is to agree a short list once.
| Tag | For |
|---|---|
| Contract | Anything signed with anybody. |
| Policy | Internal rules people are expected to follow. |
| Template | Things meant to be copied and filled in. |
| Statutory | Registrations, licences, anything a government issued. |
| Confidential | Handle carefully, whatever folder it is in. |
Five is usually enough. The test for a new one: would at least ten files carry it, and would somebody search for it? If not, it is a note, not a tag.
Why tags beat folders for some questions
A contract with a client lives in that client’s place. A contract with a supplier lives in Finance. An employment contract lives in HR. They are in three folders for good reasons, and they are all contracts.
Folders answer who should see this. Tags answer what kind of thing is this. Trying to make one field do both is what produces folder trees nobody can navigate.
Tag as you upload. Tagging is a two-second job at the moment you have the file in front of you and a two-hour job six months later.
Where to go next
Something missing or wrong here? Tell us. A question that needed asking usually means a page that needed writing.