How to name files so they sort in the right order

By INTRVL · Updated 28 Oct 2026 · 5 min read

We date files as YYMMDD, end with a zero-padded version like v03, and join the parts with underscores: 261028_ACME-014_poster_v03.psd. With the year first, then month, then day, alphabetical order is also date order. Padding the version means v10 comes after v09, not after v1. If you'd rather spell out the year, YYYY-MM-DD sorts the same way.

The pattern

We use four parts, in the same order every time:

1. Date as YYMMDD.
2. Job: a client or job code, like ACME-014.
3. What it is: poster, rough-cut, grade.
4. Version with two digits: v01, v02.

So a day of work looks like this, and sorts in the order you made things:

261027_ACME-014_poster_v01.psd
261028_ACME-014_poster_v02.psd
261028_ACME-014_poster_v03.psd
261029_ACME-014_poster_v04.psd

The same idea works for folders. The folder maker lets you pick a starter folder tree (video job, design job, photo shoot), edit it, warns about names Windows refuses, and downloads a .zip of the empty folders.

Dates: year first

Lists sort by comparing names from the first character. If the year comes first, the oldest file lands on top. If the day comes first, every file from the 1st of any month sits together, whatever the year.

We write the date as YYMMDD, with a two-digit year and no dashes. It's already the 2000s and we're not going backwards, so the century adds nothing for us, and the name stays short. It still sorts by date because the year comes first. The catch is that it only sorts by date within one century.

YYYY-MM-DD is the international standard way to write a date (ISO 8601), and it's what we'd reach for when files have to make sense to someone with no context, like work shared outside or archives that may outlive the century. It goes from biggest to smallest, year then month then day, so nobody has to guess whether 01/05/22 means 1 May or 5 January. Whichever form you pick, we use two digits for month and day (2026-03-09, not 2026-3-9), because otherwise the same problem returns.

Versions: pad the numbers

Some apps and websites sort names letter by letter. To them, v10 comes before v2, because they only look at the "1" and the "2". Apple shows the same thing in its own docs: sorted as plain text, "string10" lands before "string2".

Finder and File Explorer are smarter: they read numbers as numbers, so v9 comes before v20. But you won't always be looking at your files in Finder or Explorer.

So we don't depend on it. We write v01 to v99, and both kinds of sorting agree. Padding costs nothing, and it works whichever way the app sorts.

We leave "final" out of names. It rarely is. final, final2, FINAL-real don't sort, and nobody can tell which is newest. We use the next version number instead, and if a client signs off, we add _approved to a copy.

Characters we leave out

Microsoft's rules for Windows names apply to files and folders. These characters can't be used:

< > : " / \ | ? *

We also leave out these few names, which Windows keeps for itself, even with something after them (CON.txt counts):

CON, PRN, AUX, NUL, COM1 to COM9, LPT1 to LPT9

We don't end a name with a space or a dot either. Windows' own tools don't handle those properly.

Cloud drives add their own rules:

• OneDrive and SharePoint don't allow " * : < > ? / \ | or leading and trailing spaces. They also refuse names including CON, PRN, AUX, NUL, COM0 to COM9, LPT0 to LPT9, desktop.ini, .lock, anything with _vti_, and names starting with ~$.
• Dropbox always disallows / and \, and says < > : " | ? * may cause sync or display issues, especially on Windows. In the Windows app, those characters are replaced with underscores. It also asks you not to add a space at the end of a name.

Our own set is the Windows list above, plus a limit of 80 characters per name. The 80 is our preference, not a system limit.

Short names

Windows has trouble once a file's full path passes 260 characters. That's the drive letter, every folder it's in, and the file name, all added up. Dropbox asks for paths under 260 characters too.

Newer Windows can be set to allow longer paths, but only some apps go along with it. A path like Jobs\2026\ACME\ACME-014_Autumn-Campaign\Video\Edit\Exports already uses a fair share of the 260, so we keep file names short.

Spaces, underscores and dashes

Spaces are allowed. They can still trip up web links and some tools, which read a space as the end of the name. We use underscores between the parts and dashes inside a part (rough-cut), which keeps each part easy to see.

Upper and lower case

We don't use capitals to tell files apart. To Windows, OSCAR, Oscar and oscar are the same name, and a normal Mac drive works the same way. So Poster.psd and poster.psd can't live in the same folder. We write the "what it is" part in lowercase and keep job codes in capitals.