Workflows by profession

Finding last year's worksheet in this year's rush

Updated 2026-08-08 · 4 min read

Teaching produces files on a yearly cycle, and the highest-value search is always the same: the thing you made last year, findable in the two minutes before class. Systems that require filing discipline in October fail by November; search plus three habits survives.

Name for the future search

The retrieval query is predictable — subject, topic, year-group, type. Load the filename with exactly those:

bio_photosynthesis_y10_worksheet_2026.docx
bio_photosynthesis_y10_slides_2026.key

Next year, photosynthesis worksheet finds it regardless of which folder, drive or account it landed in. The year suffix keeps versions distinct when this year's revision diverges.

One folder per school year

Teaching/2026-27/ with subjects inside. At year end the folder archives wholesale, and the new year starts clean — copying forward only what gets reused, which the year-stamped names keep unambiguous. Marking and student work stays inside the year folder it belongs to, which is also the honest answer to retention questions: one folder to keep, one to eventually delete.

The LMS scatter

Google Classroom and the rest export with names like Assignment - Copy of Copy - Jonas M.pdf, into Downloads, in bulk. Two options that work: a per-assignment intake folder made at download time, or — for the bulk case — batch renaming on export (Finder's Rename handles add-text and replace-text over a whole selection). Marking season is exactly when filing discipline dies; date-scoped search (everything added this week, kind PDF) is the tool that reassembles the pile afterwards.

Sharing without losing the original

Worksheets emailed to colleagues and uploaded to shared drives fork into variants. The rule that preserves sanity: the year folder holds the authoritative copy; what is shared is an export. When a returned improvement is worth keeping, it becomes next year's version with next year's stamp — the chain of _final_v3_ACTUAL names never begins.

Common questions

How do I find materials I made years ago?

Consistent topic keywords in filenames plus whole-archive search. Year folders keep copies distinct; the topic word finds all of them.

What is the best way to handle bulk student submissions?

Batch rename on export and a per-assignment folder. Afterwards, date-scoped searches reassemble anything that landed astray.