Is this a way to manage my team's shared drive?

Not in the collaboration sense. Elegant File Explorer is a single-user, local app — no shared permissions, no co-editing. What it does is tidy the folders on your machine, and if one of those is a synced folder (OneDrive, SharePoint, Dropbox), your tidying reaches the shared space through the sync tool. Each teammate runs their own copy.

Will it clean up the `~$` files that clutter every Office folder?

Yes. The temp-files recipe finds the orphan ~$ lock files in your Documents and subfolders and sends them to the Recycle Bin. They are regenerable — Office recreates them when needed — and the Recycle Bin means they are recoverable anyway.

Can it keep the current version of a document apart from the old ones?

It files by type and date, and renames spreadsheets with the month so your archive is chronological. For the final_v3/(2) version sprawl, a rule keyed to those name markers can gather suspected old copies into a review folder — nothing deleted, just set aside for you to prune.

Do my documents leave my PC?

No. All the sorting is local, moving files on your own disk. Nothing is uploaded and no account is required. If a rule targets a synced folder, that is your cloud drive syncing it — on your terms.

Can two of us share the same rules?

Not live, but you can export your rules to a portable file and each import them on your own PC, so a team starts from the same setup. The rules then run per-machine, each on that person’s folders. Available now on the Microsoft Store.

Organize office files: your admin chaos, sorted

Every office runs on the same four files: a spreadsheet, a deck, a set of minutes, and a document made from a template. And every office folder ends the same way — report_final_v3.xlsx next to Q2 deck (2).pptx next to ata reunião.docx next to eleven ~$ files nobody put there. By Friday you cannot tell the live version from the dead one, and “just send me the latest” turns into ten minutes of archaeology.

The admin work is not the problem. The problem is the daily toll of renaming, dragging and second-guessing which file is current. A computer can carry that, by the two things that identify an office file: what kind of document it is and when it belongs to. Everything below happens on your own PC, moving files, never deleting them.

First, an honest framing#

Elegant File Explorer is a single-user, local program. It is not a team platform: no shared permissions, no collaboration layer, no coordinating who-edits-what. So this guide is about a smaller, more honest promise — your side of the admin mess in order. The reports you download, the decks you build, the minutes you write, the templates you reuse. Rules run on the folders you use, on your machine. That is the part you can fix today, without asking anyone.

The Office & Work pack#

Open the Recipe Gallery (the wizard offers it with “How about starting from a ready-made recipe?”) and the Office & Work pack covers the everyday paperwork. The ones that carry the load:

Reports and spreadsheets by month files your .xlsx, .xls, .xlsm and .csv into Work\Spreadsheets\{year}\{month-name} and renames each to 2026-06_name, tagged Spreadsheet. The end of report_final_v3 lost in Downloads.
Presentations gathered collects your .pptx, .ppt and .odp into Work\Presentations with the Presentation tag — every deck one click away when the meeting starts.
Meeting minutes and agendas recognizes minutes and agendas by name (“minutes”, “agenda”, “meeting notes”) and files them into Work\Minutes by year and month, tagged Minutes. When someone asks “what did we decide?”, the answer is filed under the right month.
Office templates gathers your .dotx, .xltx and .potx into Work\Templates with the Template tag, so you always start from the right master instead of hunting for it.

None of these read the internet or delete anything. They match on the file type and name, and they move. You watch the whole thing in the simulation first.

Clear the safe junk#

Word, Excel and PowerPoint leave orphan lock files behind — the ones that start with ~$. They are regenerable junk. The Office: clean orphan temp files (~$) recipe walks your Documents and subfolders, finds those ~$ files, and sends them to the Recycle Bin — where they are recoverable, and where Office recreates them if it ever needs to. Your folders stop showing phantom files, and the only documents left in view are real ones.

Let the day’s documents file themselves#

The manual sorting stops entirely with one watch rule.

Document arrivesRule sees Word/Excel/PowerPointTags it ReceivedFiles into Work/Received by month

The Work documents on autopilot recipe watches your Downloads and Desktop in real time, and the moment a .docx, .xlsx or .pptx lands, it moves the file into Work\Received by month with the Received tag. Your digital desk tidies itself while you work. If you have never set up a watch rule, our guide on going from manual filing to autopilot walks the mindset.

For the version problem — the final_v3 and (2) copies breeding in a folder — a rule keyed to those markers in the name can shunt suspected old versions into a _Review versions subfolder so only the current file stays in view. And the signed final of a contract stays apart from its drafts on its own: the Digitally signed contracts recipe recognizes documents that came back from an e-signature service (“signed”, “DocuSign”, and the like) and gathers them into Documents\Signed, tagged Signed.

How “shared” happens, honestly#

Here is the honest bridge to a team. A folder your company syncs with OneDrive, SharePoint or Dropbox is, on your machine, just a normal folder on disk. So a rule can watch it or target it like any other folder. Point a rule’s “Move to” at that synced folder and your local filing lands in the shared space — the sync tool does the sharing, not the app. You are not granting permissions or coordinating a team inside Elegant File Explorer; you are tidying a folder that happens to sync. That distinction is the whole honesty of it.

Do

Tidy the folders you touch — Downloads, Desktop, Documents.
Target a synced folder with "Move to" to let your filing reach the team.
Use tags (Spreadsheet, Minutes, Received) as instant filters across it all.

Avoid

Expecting shared permissions or live co-editing — it is a single-user, local app.
Assuming a teammate's rules run on your PC — each person sets up their own.

Because rules travel, a whole team can start from the same setup: one person builds the rules and exports them to a portable file, and everyone imports the same ones on their own machine. Our guide on moving automation rules to a new PC covers it — that is the closest thing to “team filing,” and it is honest about being per-machine.

Nothing is deleted, everything is reversible#

The worry with automating admin is that a rule moves the wrong document the day before it is due. Two guardrails answer it. “Simulate effect” shows the full preview — every move — before a single file budges. And every run is logged: click “Undo” on a run and it all goes back. Moving is moving, never deleting (the ~$ cleanup uses the Recycle Bin, which is also recoverable). A deck filed to the wrong month is one click from home. And with tags on everything, the built-in Finder pulls up “every spreadsheet tagged Received in June” instantly, so the tags and reminders do double duty as a filing system and a search index.