How Do You Manage Files When Using Remote Access?

Alovra Kessanix

I’ve been thinking about how people organize files when they regularly access their computers remotely.

Remote access is useful when you need to work with a file that is stored on another computer, but it can sometimes become difficult to remember where everything is located. This becomes even more noticeable when the remote computer contains documents, images, videos, downloads, and project files from different activities.

One workflow I’ve been considering is keeping the remote computer organized into clearly separated folders rather than relying heavily on the Downloads folder.

For example:

• Work or project files
• Personal documents
• Media files
• Temporary downloads
• Frequently accessed resources
• Archived files

I also think file naming becomes more important when accessing a computer remotely. A descriptive filename can make it much easier to find something without having to open multiple files just to determine what they contain.

Another question is whether people prefer transferring files to their local computer or simply accessing them directly on the remote machine. For smaller documents, transferring them may be convenient, while larger media files could make more sense to leave on the remote system.

I’m curious how other TeamViewer users handle this in their everyday setup.

Do you keep a dedicated folder structure for remote-access files? Do you regularly clean your Downloads folder? And when you need a file on the remote computer, do you normally transfer it locally or work with it remotely?

I’d especially like to hear from people who use remote access between several personal computers. What organization habits have made remote file management easier for you?

Geoff Walker

@Alovra Kessanix Your question is a good one, but I think it assumes that one person owns both computers. Someone else needs to address that.

I can only answer your question from the perspective of the TeamViewer Free product, which is what I'm currently focused on. The free product is targeted at "one person helping another person at a distance, especially friends and family, where both ends are dedicated personal computers, and each end is connected to the internet via residential-grade service". In that context, the computers are always owned by different people, so the question is actually moot.

As an example, the question I answered just before yours was from a son who is using the free product to help his father, who has Alzheimer's. His problem was that the "commercial use" algorithm in the free version was seeing something at one end that implied a "commercial environment", and it was blocking the connection. (Bad Dog!)

While it is possible to use the free product for remote access of multiple computers owned by the same person, my experience is that the "commercial use" algorithm has a much higher chance of blocking the communication in that application simply because there's a higher chance of some tiny commercial aspect being found somewhere in the setup.

From a personal perspective, I organize the ~500 GB of files on my own PC very much along the lines of your bulleted list, in both Windows files and emails. To make the separation between Windows OS and my data cleaner, I keep all my data on a D: drive, with all the Windows OS files on the C: drive. I manage that by using the Windows native "Location" (in Properties) setting for each main Windows data folder such as Documents, Downloads, etc. Where needed, I use application-specific move-file capabilities (like in Thunderbird email) to move my 20 GB of emails to the D drive.