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Compare Folders, Paths and Drives
Use the power of Virtual Folders to Compare
Folders, Paths, Drives and even Network storage areas. Comparing folders creates a new Virtual Folder with two folders, paths or drives of your choosing and once evaluated arranges the files for viewing.
Once compared both Folders / Paths
| • | one updated from the other |
| • | only selected files merged |
| • | lonely or other files copied or deleted |
Automatic, Semi-automatic and Manual merging
allows you to merge only what you want
Comparison results can be easily used to remove files as well
You can select files by their status (Same, Newer, Older, Lonely) and then do anything with them you like such as deleting them.
Detailed control if necessary
After selecting a group of files you inspect them individually to decide if they should be included in any merge operation.
Hide files and folders that are not relevant
so that you can better see and work with files that are newer, older, lonely or the same depending on your needs.
Almost all of File Boss' normal file manipulations routines
are available to you so you can clean up the folders or paths
To Compare Two Folders or Paths (and to merge and purge)
To start comparing folders or paths
| • | Select Tools | Compare Folders... from the main menu |
| • | or click the Compare button |
| • | Complete the Dialog and press OK to start have FileBoss collect and compare the folders. |
| • | When FileBoss has finished comparing the files it will display them in a special Virtual Folder window: |
Using the Compare / Merge Dialog
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The Compare / Merge Dialog is where you specify which two folders or paths should be compared.
Note you can also specify specific folders to exclude. For example, specifying C:\My Documents | -My Pictures in the Folder 1 field would exclude the folder My Documents from being included in the comparison.
The Patterns field is optional (if it is empty all files will be included). You can specify specific files to be compared or specific files not to be compared (precede the file pattern with a '-') or both to include and exclude.
Time resolution and time zone offsets can also be specified to further refine the comparison.
Using the Merge Dialog
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The top half of the Merge dialog shows the status of the files in the compared paths/folders.
The Which Folders to Update section allows you to specify which folders you want to merge to:
Both Files will be copied both ways making the folders equal when done.
Folder 1 Newer, Lonely and/or selected files from Folder or Path 1 will be copied to Folder 1. Folder 2 will not be changed even if there are newer files in Folder 1
Folder 2 Folder 2 will be updated as above. Folder 1 will not be changed.
Selected Selected files in will be copied from the folder / path they are in to the appropriate place in the other folder / path. If a file is selected it will be copied regardless of whether it is older, newer, the same or lonely, i.e. if it is selected it will be copied.
This can be used, for instance, to copy older files (perhaps backup files) back to their original folder.
The Merge What section determines which files will be updated:
Newer Newer files will be copied
Lonely Lonely files (those without a comparable file in the other folder/path) will be copied.
Pressing Merge will perfume the indicated copy operations.
Pressing the Close This Dialog button will close this dialog but will not exit the comparison mode. You can close the dialog and then use the Tool box to examine and mark the files to perform more precise merging.
You can always return to this dialog again by pressing the Merge button on the toolbox.
Working in the Comparison Window
The comparison window is a special version of a Virtual Folder. File from the two paths are displayed together sorted by path, name and modified date. The status column to the left shows:
N Newer - the other folder's file is older (by modified time)
O Older the other folder's file is newer (by modified time)
L Lonely the other folder has no matching file
_ The two files are the same as far as name and times are concerned.
Alternating colored bands are used to display files that are comparable (Newer, 0lder or the Same).
Most normal FileBoss commands (such as hide, delete, copy, rename) are available even though files are being compared. If an action is performed that can corrupt the integrity of the comparison, FileBoss will re compare the files. You always can force a re-comparison by selecting the Edit | Refresh Virtual Folder command from the main menu or clicking its command button.
Using the Compare Toolbox
This Compare Folders Toolbox allows you to quickly manipulate the compared files.
Since the tool box floats you can go back and forth between it and the Virtual Folder to select or hide the various types of compared files using the toolbox and then looking at them performing actions on them using normal FileBoss commands.
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The Merge Button
The Merge button invokes the Merge Dialog where you can instruct FileBoss to merge the compared folders according to your directions.
You can go in out of the Merge Dialog as often as you like.
The Select Buttons
The Select section allows you to select all files of a certain type and in a specific folder. For instance if you would like to look at which files are lonely hearts in Folder 2 click that button in the second column. Then you can use the F4 key to jump to the first selected file (and then the next and the next and ....).
You might then decide, after seeing which files were lonely-hearts, to delete them or merge them to the other folder or even copy them somewhere else using FileBoss's normal copy routines.
The Hide Buttons
The Hide section provides a convenient way to hide files that are not relevant to what you are doing.
If there are only a few files that are different among many that are the same it is often convenient to hide all the 'Same' files. Or if there are a lot of 'Lonely' that are temporary or working files you don't want to merge simply hide them.
Hidden files are never copied as part of the merge process not matter their type (and hidden files loose their selected state.
Miscellaneous Buttons
Show Comparison Info...
Displays the Properties dialog showing information about the compared files.
Options
Displays the dialog for setting time resolution and other comparison options.
Close & Exit
Closes this tool box and exits Compare mode.
Ref: HTDE_COMPARE
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