Document - a single piece of writing (which could be multiple pages) on a particular topic. File - a collection off documents on related topics, or all on the same topic, physically maintained together for ease of reference. The folder in which they are placed is also called a file. Archive - a large collection of documents or files that typically concerns a number of years. Quite often, a current file is kept close to where work is done and an archive of older files is kept offsite in order to conserve local space Please note two things. First, I limited my definitions to what I thought most relevant given the question, as there are other definitions for these words. Second, in the computer world, a document as defined above is called a file, a file as defined above is called a folder and an archive as defined above is an archived folder or archived file. And in the world of computers, archives are always stored apart from folders.