Using document properties to manage files

One of the hot topics in Information Technology is document management. As hard drives have gotten larger and more computers have gotten networked, the volume of documents to be managed in a typical office has grown like Topsy. Not only do good management practices mandate organizing office documents, but governmental regulations are forcing organizations to get control of their wild proliferation.

Among the many features of Microsoft Office that have the potential to be quite useful, but which are rarely used, is a tool to facilitate managing documents. (Please note: For the remainder of this column we will be discussing Document Properties in Word, but they are also available in other Office products, such as Excel, Publisher, PowerPoint, etc. Moreover, this information will describe features available in Office 2003, but many similar features are available in earlier versions of Office.)

To see what help is available, open an existing Word document. Then click on File > Properties. You should see a display of properties that are associated with that file. For example, on the General tab is information about when the document was created, modified and accessed last. The Statistics tab reveals things like the number of pages, paragraphs, words and characters in the document.

On the Summary tab, you should see that some of the fields have been filled in automatically by Word, such as the author and a title. You can modify these fields if you want to. In the other Summary fields, you can add a description to the document, assign it to a category, explain it, or instruct others on what to do with it.

The information you associate with the document can get even more granular with the fields on the Custom tab. Here you can enter information in dozens of fields such as the client the document was prepared for, who sent it to you, the person who typed it, who checked it, etc.

It’s easy to forget to use document properties, especially when it requires another step before saving the file. To automatically remind you to address document properties the first time you save a document, click on Tools > Options > Save > Prompt for document properties.

Once you are using document properties, you need a way to use them to find and manage your documents. Here is one way. Click on File > Open. Find the Views icon among the icons across the top of the dialog screen. Click on its drop-down selector. One of the View options is Properties. If you select this view, when you highlight a document in the Open File dialog, you will see some of the document properties displayed to the right of the file list.

However, instead of choosing the Properties view, choose the Details view. You should have some column headings like Name, Size, Type, etc. Right-click on any of the column headings, and you will see some additional columns that can be added. Many of them come from the document properties. You could, for example, add columns that show the client, document categories you have defined, the author, any comments, etc. Once you have added these columns, you can sort the files by clicking on the column you want to use as the criterion. If the Open Files display is not wide enough to show all of the columns you have added, you can make it wider by simply dragging the edges.

You can also search for a document using its properties as the criteria. To see how this works, click on File > Open > Tools > Search. You will see two tabs. On the Basic tab, you can add search criteria such as the text you want to look for, where to look, and the file type. On the Advanced tab, you can narrow your search by adding many of the document properties to the search specifications. Click Go to start the search.

Microsoft has built into its Office products the rudimentary tools to get you started in document management. If you are struggling to find or manage your documents, you might find document properties helpful to you.