Generally speaking, archives refer to various forms of original records with preservation value directly formed by people in various social activities. The original record is its essential attribute. China ancient archives have different titles in different dynasties. Shang dynasty called it a book, Zhou dynasty called it a clock, Qin and Han dynasties called it an ancient book, and Han and Wei dynasties later called it a document, a copy, a file and a book. After the Qing dynasty, it was often called "file", but now it is unified as "file".

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Archives are conditionally transformed from documents. The "document" here refers to documents in a broad sense, that is, various materials formed in the form of words, charts, audio-visual images, etc. Archives and documents are different manifestations of the same thing at different value stages. They have homology and stage commonality, but also have personality differences such as effectiveness, function and clutch.

From file to file is a dialectical movement process of critical inheritance. From the content and form of information, the two are exactly the same, but from the perspective of timeliness, value and systematicness, archives are the constant sublation of documents. The first is the criticism of timeliness, and the file is a processed file; Secondly, the value evaluation, the file is the part of the completed document that has preservation value; Finally, it is systematic criticism. Archives are information units organized by scattered files according to certain logical laws.

Therefore, the file is the predecessor of the file and the file is the destination of the file; Documents are the basis of archives, and archives are the essence of documents; Files are the materials of files, and files are the combination of files.