Rebalancing file folders?

December 18, 2014 8:35 AM

How should I go about rebalancing alphabetized file folders so certain drawers aren't getting crammed over time?

The file cabinets at my job are overflowing in some drawers, but less so in others. We've got some new cabinets and are going to reorganize, but I'm wondering if there are some databases out there of frequency of last names beginning with specific letters (or, preferably, by first two letters) that I can use to inform our new organization system. If anyone has other ideas for approaching this I'm all ears for that as well. Thanks!

posted by jimmysmits to Work & Money (4 answers total)

It really depends on what you're organizing. In banking AM (American) and Fi (First) are going to FAR outweigh other letters. It may be different in your business.

The best thing to do is to download your customer names into Excel, do a formula that returns the first two letters from the last name:

=Left(A2,2)

Then do a pivot table. This will give you a count of each 2 letter combination.

Then some simple division will show you an even distribution.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 8:50 AM on December 18, 2014 [1 favorite]

Forget about organizing drawers on hard splits, like initial changes. Just balance everything so it's even enough, and label the drawers A-Ar, Ar-Be. If that doesn't suffice, the first three letters. Relabel as necessary, it takes no time to do that.
posted by rhizome at 9:19 AM on December 18, 2014 [5 favorites]

You don't need a database--you've already got a really good corpus in the form of all of your files. If your current files came from typical/average growth, then just splitting your current files into n even groups (where n is the number of drawers you're moving into) will automatically balance for new growth.
posted by anaelith at 6:54 PM on December 18, 2014

Agreed. If your files need to be redistributed into 24 separate groups, take a ruler or measuring tape and 23 sheets of goldenrod-colored paper or other token and space them as flags between your files. This will define your 24 groups.

If necessary, sum up the total length of files first in centimeters and be a tiny bit systematic with a spreadsheet, then divide by 24 to get the new length.
posted by sebastienbailard at 10:06 PM on December 18, 2014