What Is a Lateral File Cabinet?

Lateral file cabinets are popular among the modern furniture used for managing office files. In general, lateral file cabinets are more commonly used for their efficient dimensions, convenience, and space management. So, what is a lateral file cabinet? It’s an office furniture in which papers are added from the side of the file, and the identification tab is on the side of the file.

What are the two types of filing cabinets?

There are two types of filling cabinets; lateral and vertical. Lateral filing cabinets arrange files perpendicular to the drawer’s front. However, the vertical filling cabinets arrange the files on the same plane as the drawer’s front. Which type of filling cabinets holds more? The lateral file cabinets hold more and take up more wall space. Therefore, some offices use vertical file cabinets because they occupy less wall space. Unfortunately, vertical file cabinets hold less.

Keep reading to learn about lateral file cabinets and their features.

What Is A Lateral File Cabinet
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What is Lateral File Cabinet?

Lateral File Cabinet

Lateral File Cabinets are among the most efficient and excellent ways to keep your office files well-organized. Its broader and deeper shape allows you to hold large piles of files in offices with vertical space. This feature makes it different from other file cabinets. There are now many different shapes and styles of Lateral File cabinets in the market, But they contain 2-3 drawers, mostly 20’’ deeper and between 30’’- 42’’ wider.

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Features of Lateral File Cabinets

Many features set lateral file cabinets different from other office furniture options.

Following are the features of the lateral file cabinets.

Diverse Space Dimensions

Lateral file has democratic dimensions that allow it to fit inside almost any size of the document. They have a unique, versatile design that accommodates a large variety of document sizes, including the most common letter size, legal size, marketing brochures, sales collateral, and many more. Vertical file cabinets lack this feature due to their small space. They could not fit some specific dimensions and sizes of documents.

Versatile Design

Versatile Design

Lateral file cabinets are not just spacious, but they are an attractive piece of furniture that has diverse styles and color schemes. They can fit any sort of office decorum easily.

Authorized access

Modern office lateral file cabinets have a built-in lock system that guarantees authorized access to the confidential documents. This is a remarkable feature for some offices that contain private details of their client or employers, which are never to be disclosed.

Fireproofing and water impervious

A building can recover from a fire or water flood, but a company cannot recover after losing the valuable asset that includes their prior records and work details. Typical wooden cabinets do not provide necessary safety protection to these valuable reserves. But modern lateral file cabinets provide adequate backing to prevent the risk of information loss due to any uncertainty that can burn or moisten files.

Easy to access

Modern Lateral file cabinets are installed with rollers that allow you to smoothly drag a drawer open or closed. This allows you to easily access the document that needs to be approached often.

Lateral Filing Cabinet

Extra space on top

A lateral file cabinet takes plenty of floor space compared to a simple or vertical file cabinet, but there is extra space on the top. A printer, fax machine, office décor, or any important appliance can be kept at an average height where it is easy to use. Although, vertical file cabinets also hold this space but due to their increased height, this space if not appropriate to keep a printer or any other machine. Most people could not reach it effortlessly.

Viability of Lateral File Cabinet over other cabinets

Lateral file cabinets are designed for offices with low vertical space or free ground space. They manage more goods than regular filing cabinets and also they are suitable for homes. Although they are seen in offices more often, it does not limit them to storing files. They are viable for other purposes of storage rather than in offices. In homes, they can store clothes, cosmetics, or any other home accessories.

With a lot of features, there are some disadvantages of lateral file cabinets. We will also demonstrate some of the typical down points of these cabinets to decide whether lateral file cabinets will fit for your office or consider other options such as vertical file cabinets.

Flaws Of Lateral File Cabinet

Flaws of Lateral File Cabinet

Lateral file cabinets have a broad base, which can make it difficult to move around. Especially if the cabinets are filled with files or other goods. You might want to explore other options if you really value ground space because you surely don’t want to bump your toes repeatedly.

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Conclusions

One can say that Lateral File Cabinet improves business efficiency as it saves time to tackle the file placement and security feature by its built quality, drawer lock, fire and waterproofing, and many other favorable features. They are suitable for homes and offices where ground space is not an issue, and storage capacity is primary preference. But for offices who deficit ground space, these types of cabinets are not very suitable.

You can make a smart choice based on the mentioned facts. There are a ton of other options in the market, such as card file cabinets, mobile file cabinets, flat file storage cabinets, or the side tab filing system which is commonly seen in libraries around the world.

If you have any queries, let us know.

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