DON'S FREEWARE CORNER -- FEB 2013
FILE MANAGER PROGRAMS
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DON'S FREEWARE CORNER 2013-02
FILE MANAGER PROGRAMS
©2014 Donald R. Snow
My Freeware Corner Notes are
printed in our Utah Valley Technology and Genealogy Group monthly
newsletter TAGGology and posted on my Family History Class Notes
webpage http://uvtagg.org/classes/dons/dons-classes.html
, sometimes with updated information there.
FILE MANAGER PROGRAMS
This month we consider two free Windows utility programs that I
find very helpful in family history, as well as for any work on
the computer. These short reviews only cover a few things
these programs do.
1. EVERYTHING (Yes, that's the name of the
program.)
This is a freeware utility program that searches for files on your
computer by any characters, words, phrases in the file name, or
file type, that you enter. EVERYTHING finds the files
regardless of their location on your machine. As you enter
search terms it immediately shows you the list of files whose
names contain those terms and as you enter more search characters,
it shows fewer and fewer files since the more terms you enter, the
fewer file names will contain them all. It finds all copies
of the file on your computer, so it will find lost files that you
have forgotten about, if you remember anything in the file
name. It does not search inside the file; we'll cover those
programs another time. The results screen shows the file name,
directory, date created, size, etc., and you can sort on any of
these properties. You can launch files by clicking on them,
as long as you have that extension associated with a program on
your computer, and you can rename files right in the
program. Used in tandem with a file manager like Windows
Explorer or Q-DIR you can move files by dragging and dropping to
other directories to clean up your computer. As you move the
file you see the directory change on the results screen in
EVERYTHING. The first time you run the program it builds its
title database which it then keeps up to date as you form, copy,
or move files around. If you name your files in a systematic
way, you can find them easily with EVERYTHING no matter where you
put them. But even if you haven't named them systematically,
you can find them if you can remember anything in their file
names. The program is super fast and I use it many times
every day. Download it from http://www.voidtools.com/
.
2. Q-DIR
Q-DIR is a free file maintenance utility that can be customized to
show from 1 to 4 panels with each panel set to the same or
different directories. It also allows you to open tabs in
each panel which you can set the way you want. This makes it
easy to move files or folders between locations since you can keep
the different locations open in the different panels. You
can drag and drop files or folders from one panel or tab to
another so it helps in file maintenance. For example, if you
need to move files from one folder into several others, keep the
one folder open in one panel and the others folders open in other
panels and drag and drop the files to the folders they belong
in. It has many different views, e.g. List-View and
Tree-View and allows changing views just by clicking. It has
keyboard shortcuts for most of its functions, as well as using the
mouse. Highlighting a file and clicking a button does web
searches with various search engines for that file name.
Highlighting a file or directory and right-clicking it gives an
option to copy the path to the clipboard which you can then paste
anywhere you want. It has many other features, including a
magnifier that can be moved around the screen, but the different
panels are the most helpful property for me. It comes in
installed and portable versions. Portable just means that it
can be run from a flash drive without being installed on the
computer, so it's helpful when you are on a FHC computer.
Again, this is a program that I use many times every day.
Download it from http://www.freewarefiles.com/Q-Dir_program_40958.html
.
I hope you find these helpful.
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