Using Text Files As a Productivity Tool

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how useful text files can be.

An often overlooked productivity technique for using computers is to use simple text files with your other files. Text files are tiny files that just contain plain text. Look at this text file here. You can see the size is just 3 bytes. Not 3K, 3 bytes. You can't get Pages, Documents, or Word Documents anywhere near that size. This one is 3 bytes because if you open it it contains just 3 characters. There's no overhead at all. So these are really tiny. Like specks of dust on your hard drive, but they can contain lots of information. 

One way to use them is to put text files inside of folders to describe the contents of the folder. So, for instance, here in this folder named Project Alpha I've got a text file, also named Project  Alpha. I'm matching the text file name with the folder name. Others may want to use something like Readme.txt every time so it's the same name inside each folder. However you name them you can put information in these text files that describes the other files in the folder, what the entire project is about. You can write these as ongoing notes or as something you may want to read ten years from now when you might forget what this was all about. 

Unlike notes from the Notes App they are associated with files. They can be sitting right there in the folder with the file. If you created a note in the Notes App it would be in a completely separate place and you'd have to include an explanation that the note is about something at some point on your hard drive. Having the text file with files makes them really useful. 

You can have one or more in a folder like this but you could also have ones that are associated with specific files. Like for instance here's a PDF and I want to describe what that PDF is about. So I've  created a text file that has the same name and sits there in the same folder. So you might have an entire folder, say, of receipts or scans or other things like that and include an occasional text files that have the same name so you have more information there. 

You can continue to edit text files so they can become logs of information. You can have notes about a project and continue to add more to the notes or put checklists of things in that text file and eliminate each line as you perform the task. You can use them for any number of things that you would use a note in the Notes App for except that these text files would be sitting with other files on your drive. Since they do sit with the other files that means they can come along with them. If I were to move this folder somewhere else everything in it comes along including the text files. If I were to back this up or archive this, the text files come along as well. So notes that you create that go with the file or notes that you create that go with the folder come along with it wherever it goes. If you're using Time Machine to backup or any kind of good backup solution you're going to get versions of this as well. So if you accidentally delete something out of this text file then the deleted portion should be in the previous backup. That's something you don't get with the Notes App. 

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So how do you create text files? Well, you've got an app on your Mac that will do it. Text Edit. Launch Text Edit and you can create a text file when you create a new document. However, you may need to change a setting first. Text Edit actually handles two different types of files. It can do Rich Text or Plain Text. The default for Text Edit is to create Rich Text files. Which can include styling and there's some file overhead and everything. You can switch it here in Settings to always create a Plain Text file when you make a new document. Even after you do that, whichever one you choose, you can always go to Format and switch to the other type of document. But setting this to Plain Text in the Settings is really useful if you plan to use a lot of text files, like I do. Then note that you can also set some other things up for plain text like which font is used as the plain text font. 

The file itself doesn't include any font information. This is just how the window will display it when you look at a text file. You can also set the width and height of the window when you open up a text file and whether or not that text wraps to a page. In other words the line wraps to the next one. It just doesn't get cutoff to the right. 

Now you should know that while it is easy to create and edit text files on a Mac, because you're got Text Edit. You don't have Text Edit on iPad OS or iOS. So you'd need a third party app to edit text files although you can view them just fine in the Files App. You can even select and copy text from existing text files. 

You can also use plain text files in Text Edit as a distraction for your writing tool. By writing in Text Edit with plain text you're not distracted by styling, formatting, or any of that. You can just concentrate on the words themselves and then afterwards you can easily Copy & Paste or even open up the text document in Pages or Word to continue working with it. That's another thing about Text Files. They've got ultimate compatibility. Any computing system can open up Text Files. They are plain and basic so you can be sure that you can open up your Text Files on any system now, 10 years from now, and a 100 years from now. 

Now I already mentioned that they come along with the folder because they are just files with the other files there. So this is particularly useful when you're sharing files. So, for instance, if I were to share this folder with somebody over iCloud or any system I can have a Text File in there that explains what these files are for and I can have lots of notes. They can add notes to it as well. You can use this as a way to communicate. Even if you were to take this folder and then compress it and then send that zip file to somebody else, that zip file would include all of the files here including that Text File. In that case it's definitely handy to name it Readme or something like that. 

Here are a few additional tips. In Text Edit you can use math notes with text files. They are not as full featured as using them in the Notes App and some other places. Like you can't use variables. But you can do basic things like this, type equals, and you'll get the result. Just press Return and it's there. You can do more complex things like this and you'll still get the results. 

You can also go with other apps to create Read and Edit Text Files. One that I particularly like is this free one in the App Store. So, for instance, I can open this up in Text Edit, but I can also Open With this third party editor here which has lots of additional functions that you won't find in Text Edit. You can always select a Text File, use Command i to get info, then change the Open With option here and click Change All. Now All text files will open with that third party app instead of Text Edit. BBEdit is another popular Text Editor that's been around forever. 

Now dot txt files aren't the only kind of plain text files. You also have CSV files. Comma Separated Variables. So, You can create one in Text Edit the same way. So, each line represents a row in the spreadsheet and each comma represents a different column. So you can create a little spreadsheet as a text file like this. If we Save this to the Desktop and name it with .CSV instead of .txt then we get a text file just like any other. I can Control click, right click, or two-finger click and Open With Text Edit and edit it still as a text file. You can see that it's really tiny. 78 bytes. One for every character. But, if I QuickLook this file it will show me the information in a Table and by default the app that opens this is Numbers. So if I double click on this it's actually going to open Numbers and import that data into a new spreadsheet. You can also Drag & Drop into a Numbers document as well.

So if you ever want to store spreadsheet like data in the simplest possible way you can create a CSV file in Text Edit or any text editor. 

One last tip. You may be tempted to try to make some text standout. Like maybe make this all caps to make the title standout or do that for any of these headings. Or include some special characters or bullets or something in front of things. You can certainly do that and come up with your own system for doing that. But if you're wondering if anybody has come up with a standardized system for making text standout and kind of simulating formatting with Plain Text Only, well, there is such a system. It's called Markdown. So for instance the notes here for this episode in Plain Text without Markdown look like this. But I wanted to make things look a little neater but use a standard then I would have this. I've got the little hash symbol here showing this is the title, two hashes showing each as a heading, and a dash and a space for list items like this. There are lots of great guides online for Markdown. Here's one that you can go to and you can look at all the different standard ways to do things like headings and lists and other formatting still just using Plain Text. There are two advantages to using Markdown in Plain Text. One is that if you're working with somebody else you've got to standard now that you can both use. The other is there are lots of apps out there that will take Markdown Plain Text files and actually display them with Headings and Lists like you would expect in a Rich Text or Pages or Word documents. So using this Standard can have its benefits. 

One last thing about Text Files is that since they are there with your regular file they will show up in Searches. So, for instance, if I searched for this text here, you can see that I get that Text File and some other documents that contain that text. Whereas if I put that in a note in the Notes App or some other productivity tool it wouldn't show up when searching for files. Then when you find the file you want you can always go to the bottom of the search window here and see where it is located and go right to that folder to find the other files there. 

So to help with organization and productivity on your Mac try to incorporate some small plain text files when you can. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.