What this covers
- Rename at the moment of download, never afterwards
- Lead with subject, then year, so sorting does the work
- Split combined files before they go in the folder
- Keep one untouched folder of originals
Exam board filenames are database keys. They are generated by a content system that knows the subject code, the series and the variant, and has no opinion at all about what a student would find readable. That is a reasonable engineering decision and a miserable folder.
The fix is not clever. It is a naming convention applied at the moment of saving, and the only difficult part is that it has to be a habit rather than a project.
Lead with what sorts usefully
A file manager sorts alphabetically. If the first thing in every filename is the subject and the second is the year, alphabetical order becomes subject-then-chronological order for free, with no tagging, no database and nothing to maintain.
Put the year in four digits and the season in a word rather than a letter. <code>Maths-2023-Summer-P1V2-QP</code> reads correctly at a glance and sorts correctly beside <code>Maths-2024-Summer-P1V2-QP</code>. The same information as <code>9709_s23_qp_12</code>, and you can find it.
A convention that works
Five segments, in this order, separated by hyphens.
| Segment | Example | Why it is there |
|---|---|---|
| Subject | Maths | Groups the folder by course |
| Year | 2023 | Four digits, so 2009 sorts before 2010 |
| Season | Summer | Summer, Winter or March - a word, not a letter |
| Paper and variant | P1V2 | Which paper, and which regional variant |
| Type | QP | QP, MS, ER or IN |
Maths-2023-Summer-P1V2-QP.pdf. Twenty-nine characters, and you never open the wrong one.
Why the variant matters more than people think
Large international subjects are sat in several time zones, and each zone gets a different paper. Variant 1, 2 and 3 are genuinely different questions of comparable difficulty.
If you sit the wrong variant and mark it against your own variant's mark scheme, nothing lines up and the confusion takes a while to diagnose. Put the variant in the filename and the mistake becomes impossible.
Decode the original name once
Most boards use a variant of the same scheme, and ten minutes learning yours pays for itself immediately. In the Cambridge example, 9709 is A Level Mathematics, s23 is the summer 2023 series, qp is the question paper, and 12 means paper 1 variant 2.
Other boards differ in the details and not in the principle. Every segment is a code, the codes are consistent within a board, and once you can read them the renaming step takes seconds rather than requiring you to open each file.
Download in one sitting
Collecting papers as you need them spreads a twenty-minute job across a whole term and guarantees the folder is never complete. Download the full range you intend to work through in one session, rename as you go, and then stop thinking about it.
The ten-minute setup
Once per subject, at the start of a revision period.
- Decide the range
Six years is usually the right span: enough variety to cover the syllabus, recent enough that the specification has not changed underneath you.
- Download everything for that range
Question papers, mark schemes and examiner reports. Inserts too, where the paper has one.
- Rename as each one saves
Subject-Year-Season-PaperVariant-Type. The browser's save dialogue is the right moment; a bulk rename later is not.
- Split any combined files
A paper bundled with its mark scheme should be two files before it enters the folder.
- Compress anything over about 10 MB
So the folder syncs to a tablet without complaint. Check the compressed version is still readable.
- Copy the lot into an Originals folder
Never touched, never edited. Everything else you do is to working copies.
Tools for the setup
Two folder structures
Either works. Mixing them does not.
Flat, one folder per subject
- Every file for the subject in one place
- Relies entirely on the naming convention
- Fastest to search and to sync
- Best when you are working through papers in order
Nested, one folder per year
- A folder per sitting, containing its four documents
- Matches how the material is published
- Easier to see at a glance what is missing
- More clicking during a session
A folder that stays usable
- One naming convention, applied without exception
- Four-digit years, so sorting works past 2009
- Variant in every filename
- Combined files split before filing
- An Originals folder you never edit
- Everything downloaded to the device before you need it
Questions and answers
Is it worth renaming files I have already downloaded?
If there are fewer than about twenty, yes, and it takes ten minutes. Past that, it is usually faster to download the set again with the naming habit in place than to decode sixty existing names.
Should I use spaces or hyphens in filenames?
Hyphens. Spaces survive most systems now but still cause trouble in links, on some cloud drives and in scripts, and they make a filename harder to read at small sizes.
Where should the folder live?
Somewhere that syncs to the device you actually revise on, with everything available offline. A folder that needs a connection is a folder that will fail on a train.
What about papers from a teacher rather than the board?
Same convention, with the source in the type segment - Maths-2023-Summer-P1V2-QP-SchoolPack. It is worth distinguishing, because school packs are sometimes edited and sometimes have the mark scheme attached.
