Time to dump, save and organize!

Screen Shot 2016-04-21 at 8.00.07 AMIt’s getting to be that time of year to think about cleaning out desks and lockers, but what about our digital content? Nobody else can see our digital mess, so why should we care? Well, if it lives in the Cloud, that mess goes with you and besides that, it takes up precious space. Here are some simple steps that you can take to back up content, save the important stuff and dump the nonessentials:

  1. Make sure that your photos are backed up to Google Drive. This post will explain how:
    Save the Photos! Always make sure you see them in Google Drive before you delete them from Photos.
  2. Clean out any unwanted notes in Notability and then make sure the important ones are backed up in Google Drive (in Notabiity settings).
  3. Clean up Notability in iCloud. This post will explain how: Notability Clean Up
  4. Clean out old documents and presentations in Pages and Keynote. Make sure the ones you want to keep are backed up in iCloud.
    1. In Settings – Go into Pages and Keynote and make sure iCloud is turned on.
    2. In Settings, Go to iCloud, tap on iCloud Drive, Tap on the button “Show on Home Screen” to turn it on.
    3. Now find the iCloud Drive icon on your Home Screen and open it to see what is backed up to iCloud. This is a great way to verify what truly is backed up.
  5. Clean out your Google Drive. Get rid of old documents, photos, whatever is there that you don’t need or don’t want to save.

Once everything is cleaned up and backed up, now you are ready to organize in Google Drive.

  1. Open Google Drive and create a folder called 2015/2016 (or something similar).
  2. Open that folder and now create a few folders within that folder such as:
    1. Images
    2. Notability
    3. Math
    4. English

You get the idea. Now you’ve saved the important stuff and you can find it easily without all of the clutter. Plus, you’ve created more space in which to save more next year.

Leave a comment if you have any additional tips that you use and as always, please reach out to me, John Craft, or Scott McDonald if you have questions or need help.