How to Organize Word Documents

By Foye Robinson

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Microsoft Word is used to create documents for work, school and home-related projects. As your Word documents grow, it’s sometimes difficult to stay organized and find files you saved weeks, months or years ago. Taking time to organize your documents, however, can save you time. You can place files you use for a particular task or project in the same folder and divide the folder into smaller categories to help you manage your work more easily. Once you have a system in place, you can quickly save and find related documents in their respective folders.

Step 1

Go to Microsoft Word. Check to see where your files are saved by going to Tools and Options and click on the File Locations tab. Under the File types list, you will find the location of your Word files. The Documents option will show where your Word documents are saved.

Step 2

Double-click on the file location for Documents or select it and click on Modify if you’d like to change the location where your documents are saved. Then browse to the folder location you want and click on OK.

Step 3

Minimize Microsoft Word and go to My Documents folder. To open My Documents, click on Start, then My Documents.

Step 4

Browse to the folder location where your Word documents reside. You may navigate from the My Documents folder by clicking on the Address bar link and finding the correct drive for your Word documents.

Step 5

Create a folder in My Documents by going to File, New and Folder. Then type in the folder name you want.

Step 6

Move files into the folder by selecting them with your mouse and dragging them into the newly created folder. To select the files individually, hold down the Ctrl key and select each file. To select multiple files next to each other, hold down the Shift key and select the first and last files. These files should be highlighted.

Step 7

Add additional folders within the new folder by double-clicking on the folder. Then repeat step 5 to create a folder.

Step 8

Delete any Word documents you no longer need by selecting the file(s) you want to delete and pressing the Delete key. Repeat the process to delete additional documents from the folder.

Step 9

Rename any files or folders by right-clicking over the file name and selecting Rename. Be careful not to change the file extension when you change its name. Then type in the name you want to use and press the Enter key.

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