METHOD FOR ACCESSING COMPUTER FILES AND DATA USING LINKED CATEGORIES ASSIGNED TO EACH DATA FILE RECORD ON ENTRY OF THE DATA FILE RECORD

A computer filing system for accessing files and data according to user-designated criteria. The system allows the user to define a virtually unlimited number of hybrid folders by describing, using terms of their own selection, the file contents of those files which are to belong to particular hybrid folders. Such hybrid folders can be implemented on top of, and used in addition to, the normal hierarchical structured directory, or they may replace such normal structures entirely. The inventive computer file control system could therefore be used as the basis of a new computer operating system. In the process of search and retrieval, the invention ensures in two ways that the user defines a filter which will always find at least one file. The user is not required to type the key words to search but instead chooses the words from pick lists, making mistyping impossible. As the user builds the search filter definition, categories which would find no data are automatically excluded as pick list possibilities.