Lots of great ideas (I favour the YYYMMDD prefix for time sensitive stuff as well). I also think using meaningful directory structures is a winner too, but it does make protability difficult. If I mail you ‘V22.doc’ am I going to know where to put it when you mail back the revision? Will you know what it is unless I explain in detail in the mail?

So why not use the most excellent THE Rename ( http://www.herve-thouzard.com/modules/wfsection/article.php?articleid=1 ) to add the directory structure text to the file name? Then strip it off when the file comes back.

It’s also a great help if you discover that your naming convention is just about to fail and you need to do some serious file naming surgery.

I’ve used it for tens of thousands of files as part of major reference work projects and it’s never let me down.