# AC.ID for notes and files **URL:** \ **Category:** Workbook/Workshop\ **Created:** [January 27, 2022, 9:53am UTC](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/t/ac-id-for-notes-and-files/327 "2022-01-27T09:53:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![bogenschlag](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/user_avatar/forum.johnnydecimal.com/bogenschlag/32/117_2.png) [@bogenschlag](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/u/bogenschlag)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2022, 9:53am UTC](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/t/ac-id-for-notes-and-files/327/1 "2022-01-27T09:53:25Z")
Since [I talked about my own derivate of J.D (and P.A.R.A.) last November](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/t/my-derivate-of-j-d-and-p-a-r-a/281) my implementation underwent some changes recently. I still use J.D foremost as means to organize notes, nowadays in NotePlan (again). I use it for my files, too, but since I don’t “do” that many (new) files anymore these days it’s a little bit of an “after-use”, albeit a very welcome one. Initially I simply moved the existing structure and notes back from Agenda to NotePlan more or less 1:1. Of course stuff I had put in a personal and a work “catch-all” logging/journaling category with yearly projects (2021, 2022 etc.) in Agenda plus some other stuff went (back) into the daily notes in NotePlan, freeing up some “J.D space”. The `AC–AC` and `AC` levels originally translated themselves into folders, but where eg. `12/006 Upgrade auf ILIAS 7` was a “project” in Agenda’s terms containing “unnumbered” notes, it now was (and still is) a note in NotePlan. I didn’t feel right to make it a folder because the then unnumbered files therein would become somewhat messy. And a lot of `AC.ID` folders would have contained only one file. I had already decided to move “sideways” instead in a bit of a “Zettelkasten-inspired” way. If one note (de facto one Markdown file) is not enough (ie. gets too long and unwieldy), it “spawns” linked “sub-notes” with the letters a to z added to the J.D number, eg. (originally) `12/006a File(service)-Migration vs. NetApp-Snapshots`, `12/006b Testen des Migrations-Patches` etc. These sub-notes do _not_ get entries in the J.D index, by the way. I (re-)introduced index notes I had already experimented with during my last time in NotePlan (eg. `12/000 Betrieb und Support Index`), but that meant putting these on the `AC–AC` levels (eg. `10–19 Projekte Index`) and an `Index` on the top level (but, ironically, the bottom of the list, because NotePlan sorts folders to the top), too—which completely fell out of the J.D schema (which kept bugging me). Then I had somewhat of a personal “epiphany”: Why not get rid of the folders (in NotePlan) altogether? Also I was tempted to try the “classic full-on AC.ID style J.D“. So after gaming out a new working J.D structure in MindNode (and through some small-scale experimentation directly in NotePlan) I gave up on P.A.R.A. (at least for now) as well as my own three-digit ID schema _and_ folders (and went work on my J.D index before actually moving everything around in NotePlan). Now in NotePlan (_not_ files!) the only visual structure in the notes site-pane now comes from the J.D notation. Yes, that makes for a very long, “flat” list. I don’t care, though, because I basically don’t use it. I navigate either via NotePlan’s command bar (cmd-j) directly to (or “near”) a specific not (J.D numbers, as we all know, are perfect for that … 😉) or simply to the index note (`00–09 Index`) and “surf” to where I want to go from there. So far seems to work (a lot) better for my brain than a long folder-structured list. And I’m allowing myself one more deviation from “by the book J.D”: While, when organizing files, I agree that it makes sense for files only ever to live in the `AC.ID` folders, in NotePlan I don’t have any folders. `11 Betrieb and Konfiguration` for example is a note—and so I’m using it as such. Not only does it make more dedicated index notes unnecessary, I’m allowing myself to keep information/note snippets (often no more than a short paragraph or a link) in these notes that would otherwise simply not justify their own fully J.D’d note. It works surprisingly well for me. In my J.D index I have an entry `00–09 Index / Organisation und Verwaltung` which “translates” just to `00–09 Index` in NotePlan (and which will become a directory called `00–09 Organisation und Verwaltung` if I ever need it in my files, too) and which serves a my navigational starting point. I also collect links to active projects there: ![Bildschirmfoto_2022-01-26_21-39-14](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/uploads/default/original/1X/fc68233582f35642acce1d2122ec4861efcac556.png) The name ensures it stays on top of the notes list. The rest of the basically looks like this: ```auto 10–19 ILIAS 11 Betrieb und Konfiguration 11.01 Something 11.02 Some Project 11.02a Sub-page 11.02b Another sub-page … 12 Fehler und Probleme … 20–29 E-Learning und E-Assessment … 22 OER und Creative Commons 22.01 H5P … etc. pp. ``` Like I wrote above, everything is a note, the “upper-level” notes serve dual purpose both as indexes and for keeping “small stuff” related to this areas/categories: ![Bildschirmfoto_2022-01-26_21-47-31](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/uploads/default/original/1X/aa07a8feebb94c1bf263062b084ff5216de4ee19.png) ![Bildschirmfoto_2022-01-26_21-48-06](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/uploads/default/original/1X/eee39480cfec0862dc47364f73752ebb45ef5ead.png) (There is nothing special whatsoever about the actual `AC.ID` notes.) I moved personal stuff deliberately to `90–99` to leave myself some room for growth for the work stuff (which goes up to `50–59` at the moment). One thing I like about this implementation: The same J.D index (which, by the way, still lives in an OmniOutliner document) works seamlessly both for the above ”abominable” NotePlan structure (despite my “rule-Breaking” there) as well as—in a very “classic” J.D way—for my files. And this structure and the dual usage of the ”index-y” notes in NotePlan saves me some J.D numbers. Still, I’m curious how long I’ll be able to make do with two-digit IDs. But thanks to NotePlan keeping its Markdown files accessible via the filesystem I reckon that I can switch back to longer IDs with a bit of BBEdit regexp search and replace “magic” quite easily. Should be doable for the J.D index and the directory names in the filesystem, too. That’s a bridge I’ll cross when the time comes, though. Lastly: The way I set things up in NotePlan should (for the most part) quite easily be portable to a number of other, similar note-taking apps like Obsidian, Craft etc. (On the whole nothing innovative, just remixing existing ideas. But maybe it’s still useful to others as a kind of “quarry”.)