Are You Sure You Have the Correct File?
Here's the scenario: You have exported a text (or other type) file from Alpha, or zipped some files to send to a customer as an update. Next, you open your email program, and select the file in question, and attach it. Pretty simple, right?
1 It's interesting to note that you can do this in most Windows programs. However, in many Microsoft programs, you cannot do this. Call me crazy, but wouldn't it make sense for the people that gave us this nice option in Windows to do the same in their own programs???
by Bill Warner
Well, if you do this frequently (your customer can't make up his mind, or you just realized that you forgot to send the change he wanted), you might accumulate a lot of files over a period of time. Sure, each file has a unique name, but in the heat of the moment you might mistake 0345 with 0354, and accidentally click on the wrong file.
What about exported files? Since the file will be the same name each time (assuming you have set the export to overwrite the existing file), it would seem like the problem described above would not occur. However, if something goes wrong with the export, you might end up sending the file with the correct name but with the wrong data (it could be the exported file you did last week).
Even though these might seem to be unlikely problems, they have happened to me (OK, so I'm a little dense). As a result, I've come up with a way to help prevent them from occurring.
Whenever I have to access a file for uploading (or other purposes), the first thing I do after navigating to the correct folder is sort the files by date1. This will put the most recent file at the top of the list. Then, if the file I'm expecting to find is not there, there's a good chance that something went wrong. Also, this will often put 0345 well away from others that I might confuse it with, reducing the chance of making a mistake.
Note that this works well when the file in question is in the same folder as many other files. If the file I want is in a folder by itself, this can be an advantage (no others to confuse it with), but might also be a disadvantage in the case of an exported file, since there are no other files to compare it's date with. In this case, I right-click in the area where the file is listed (but not on the file), then click on View and Details. This will show when the file was created. This way, if the file shown is the name I'm expecting, but the date isn't current, once again I know something has gone wrong.
I also recommend that my customers use the same method when they download a file from me. Before clicking on the file to execute the update, I suggest that they check the date to make sure they are using the correct file.