Mac Productivity: The Filing of Files

I have already explained the principles of how to manage files on the Mac in The Mac Desktop. One thing I didn’t point out is that, on the Mac, the Desktop is actually the Finder. If you’re using a Mac right now then just click the mouse on the desktop and you’ll see that the Finder’s menu appears on the left side of the Menu Bar. What that means is when you’re “on the Desktop” you’re actually in the Finder, but there’s no window open.

I’m pointing this out for two reasons:

1. It means that all the Services that you have defined are available to you (see
   Mac Productivity Apps: Using OS X Services if you’re not sure what Services are)
2. You can use QuickSilver on the files that are on your desktop just as you might use QuickSilver on files in Finder. You can use QuickSilver to move, copy, open and delete files – if you want to.

I’m not saying that you must use these features, but it is worth knowing that they’re available.

I like the Finder. I use it to manage two of the three folders that I keep on the desktop (as explained in The Mac Desktop.) If it were more powerful I wouldn’t need one of the other productivity applications I use: Journler. With Finder in the cover flow view, you get a one page picture of the contents of the files in a folder – for some files. With Journler I can completely read through the whole of almost every file that I store in Journler. That’s the difference – in fact that’s the difference that makes a difference.

Journler – The Alternative File System

I use Journler as my file system for all my files except music files (sound), photos and software development (source code, etc.) The reason I don’t even think of using Journler for music, photos, etc. is that those files are already well managed by other applications (in my case iTunes for music, Aperture for photos and Dreamweaver for web development.)

The files that are not well managed are the ones I create as part of the various things I do. They include files created by the following apps that I use: Word, Pages, Excel, Numbers, Powerpoint, Keynote, Omnigraffle, EasyDraw, TextEdit, Art Text and Wiretap Studio. There are also other files; scans, emails, pdf files, web pages and urls that I use Journler for.

NOTE: If you haven’t yet realized, emails are actually separate files. In Mac Mail you can drag them around and a copy of the email is naturally created for you to store in a directory or in Journler.

Now if you read the description of Journler on its web site, it won’t tell you directly that the product provides you with an alternative file system. Journler was built to be a Journal, as the name implies. But its author did a remarkably competent job of allowing you to attach and store files to any entry you make in the journal, including any empty page. When you drop a file into Journler, it stores it. You can then associate that file with as many pages of the journal that you want. All of the journal’s pages are stored within a directory system that is internal to Journler. None of this would be particularly useful if you couldn’t actually view all the files you store. But you can – and that’s what makes this product gold dust as far as I’m concerned.

Look at the screenshot above, which shows my collection of files in Journler. The Journler internal directory is displayed down the left hand side. The Journler pages within the directory I’ve currently selected; Research > IT Security, are shown in the top pane. Note that there are three and the files attached to the one I’ve selected; Security, are displayed down the right hand side. As it happens there are 42 files attached to this Journler page. And the page that is displayed in the center pane (the 2006 CSI/FBI Security Report) is one of those files.

Journler will happily display most of the files it stores; Excel, Word, Powerpoint, PDF, Pages, Numbers, TXT, RTF, HTML, Jpegs, etc., So if you simply want to read what’s in a file, there’s no need to open it – just select it and it appears in the pane and you can browse through it. If you store a URL in Journler, it will go and get the associated page from the web.

For me, this is the most important point about Journler. You can use it to archive all the files that you’re not working on. When you finish doing any kind of project or any kind of activity, just drop the files you want to keep into Journler and you can browse through them whenever you want. If you want to change them you can do that too. You just open the files in the appropriate application and when you save them, they’ll get saved back to Journler. If you want to save the file as a new version, save it to the Desktop and then drop it into Journler.

And finally, I can carry this whole archive (the one I have amounts to more than 4GB) with me on a laptop. With Journler, it’s easy enough to transfer that between machines.

It took me a long time to discover Journler. I tried other products that are quite similar in some ways including: Yojimbo, Curio, NoteBook and VooDoo Pad; all fine products in their own way, but none of them were quite powerful enough.

You may not get a sense of how useful Journler is from just reading this. I advise you to get it and try it out. It takes a lot of the pain out of managing files.

Click on this link: PDQ Mac to see a list of other postings on Apple Mac productivity.