"_final_v2_FINAL_final" — what happens when file names do your version control

Why the names keep growing

A file keeps only its latest state. So before pressing Save you make a copy "just in case", and so that the copy’s name points at now, you add "final". When the next round of changes comes, that "final" is no longer final, so it becomes "FINAL_final". Three rounds of changes, four files. Up to here, everyone does it.

In other words the file name is doing two jobs at once. One is keep this moment (the copy); the other is this is the one that went out (the "final" mark). The two jobs overlap in one string of characters, and the names grow.

What it costs

• Time spent looking. "Was it final_v2 or FINAL_final that went to the client?" You cannot know without opening them. The modified date is the last time it was opened, not the time it was sent.
• What changed. Even with two files side by side, you have to find by eye which of thirty slides changed.
• Confusion when sharing. If "Here is the final file" goes into the chat three times, the other side ends up with three too. Which one is real lives only in the sender’s memory.
• Space and noise. Seven copies of a 100 MB deck are 700 MB. Every time you open the folder, you read through seven.

What you can do right now — one rule

The cheapest method, with no tool at all, is a naming rule. Instead of "final", use a date and a number: `deck_20261028_v3.pptx`. It sorts, and unlike "final" it never becomes a lie. Mark the file you sent with something like `_sent`. It works even better when the whole team uses the same rule.

What about a cloud drive’s version history?

OneDrive, Google Drive and Dropbox keep earlier versions for a while even when you overwrite a file under the same name. You can go back without making a copy, so the names stop growing. But they keep one file at a time, there are limits on how long and how many, they do not tell you what changed, and the file has to be in the cloud. Nor can you mark which one was the version that went out. The details are in the article "What a cloud drive’s version history cannot do".

Splitting the two jobs a name was doing

Octorium takes those two jobs and splits them into history and labels. Hand it the one folder you work in, and every time you save (more precisely, when the folder goes quiet for a moment after a save) that moment is kept in the history — the copy’s job. When you send it to the client, you put a Bookmark on that moment with a label such as Sent to client — the "final" mark’s job. The folder holds one `deck.pptx` and nothing else, and Octorium creates no files in it.

• Entries are grouped under Today, Yesterday and the days of the week, with a time on every line. Click "last Tuesday afternoon" and you are there.
• Click Tell me what changed and you get one sentence on what that save changed. It is at the level of slide titles, headings and sheet names.
• Go back to this moment returns the whole folder, Go back for this file only returns one file, to how it was then. Going back is recorded too.
• Your files never leave this computer. Recording and going back both happen on this computer.

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