 Have you ever had a difficult time finding a PDF on your computer? Would you like to easily access and cite your PDFs for multiple computers? Mendeley is a simple solution that simplifies collecting, organizing, and citing your PDFs. Once you have set up your Mendeley account and downloaded the desktop software, you will need to identify where you have PDFs on your computer and decide which PDFs you will want to access in the future. Found all your PDFs? Now you can use Mendeley's Watched Folder feature to select the folders that have PDFs that you want to add to Mendeley. Open your Mendeley desktop and select Options on a PC or Preferences on a Macintosh and click on the Watched Folder tab. Check the folder or folders in your file structure where you have PDFs that you want to add to Mendeley. Mendeley will import those PDFs into its software and when possible will extract and add citation information to the record. Now use Mendeley to organize your PDFs. You have multiple options for organizing your PDFs within Mendeley. You can create your own folder structure under the My Library pane on the upper left side of the Mendeley window. Folders can be nested to create a structure that is meaningful to you. Mendeley also offers the option of automatic renaming of files and folders based on a combination of journal, author, year and title that you will choose. Go to Options or Preferences on your Mendeley desktop and select the File Organizer tab. Click Organize My Files and you can then choose to sort files into subfolders or rename document files. Drag and drop the fields you would like to use for your PDF organization into the appropriate folder or file field. Mendeley then copies your PDFs into the indicated pathway and renames and organizes the PDFs based on your choices. Mendeley provides backup for your files on their website. Mendeley offers two gigabytes of free storage on their website. There are costs for additional storage. You can select which attached PDFs you would like to synchronize with the Mendeley website by checking the folders containing the PDFs under Edit Settings at the top of the center pane of each folder. Once you have selected which folders you would like to have synced, Mendeley will sync the PDFs in those folders each time you start up Mendeley or press the Sync button. Syncing your PDFs also allows you to work on multiple computers and to have the same information on each computer. Interested in learning about other software for organizing and saving your digital objects? Visit z.umn.edu backslash personal archiving for more suggestions on how to organize your files, recipes, photographs, and other data for future use.