# Files across multiple platforms **URL:** \ **Category:** Concepts\ **Created:** [February 13, 2024, 5:33pm UTC](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/t/files-across-multiple-platforms/1233 "2024-02-13T17:33:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 5
**Author:** ![johnnydecimal](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/user_avatar/forum.johnnydecimal.com/johnnydecimal/32/1759_2.png) [@johnnydecimal](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/u/johnnydecimal)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2024, 7:36pm UTC](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/t/files-across-multiple-platforms/1233/5 "2024-02-14T19:36:59Z")
This is the whole problem with digital life in 2024 — it’s just really fragmented. I guess _ideally_ you’d try to consolidate some of this stuff. For example, iCloud Drive does all that Dropbox does. I pay for the extra storage and my Mac syncs my Documents folder there. So it’s available from everywhere. But then Google Drive for Sheets is a totally legitimate, probably-unavoidable use of _yet another place your stuff can be._ No personal criticism in my italics there. Just emphasising the nature of the problem. So, what to do? Your goal here is to be able to find stuff again. Secondary is to make it neat, because that’s just nice and will reduce stress. If you’ve only got a handful of items in a place, I’d say just name them by ID. Don’t worry about creating a structure if it’s mostly empty. Or go half way. Just create category folders, perhaps? I used to do this in Outlook, so the left pane was just a long list of category folders. I just didn’t need the overhead of clicking in to areas when trying to find mail folders, and the flat view worked well in that horizontally-challenged space. [This post](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/t/new-user-index-confusion-thoughts/1105/7) talks about how I use this approach in the iCloud app folders. But be **really strict with yourself** when using the index. Everything **must** be in there. --- _[View the full topic](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/t/files-across-multiple-platforms/1233)._