DON'S FREEWARE CORNER -- JUL 2013
COPY UTILITIES

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DON'S FREEWARE CORNER  2013-07
COPY UTILITIES

©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.

COPY UTILITIES
This month we'll look at some copy utilities that help with file maintenance which is constant problem on a computer and which help to keep things organized.

1.  EVERYTHING
Available from from  http://www.voidtools.com/ .  I discussed this program in Feb 2013, but here I will show how it can be used to copy or move files for file maintenance.  Everything is a big help since it finds files anywhere on your computer with the characters you specify.  When Everything lists the files, you can sort them by name, date, path, etc., and highlight and copy or move them where you want.  For example, suppose you want to put copies of all the photos you have of a given subject in a folder and you have some identifying characters in the titles of the photos, e.g. the name of a person.  First set up a new folder.  Then use Everything to find all the photos wherever they are on your computer.  Highlight them in Everything, right-click and drag the cursor to the folder and click on Copy.  As they are copied you will see the titles duplicated in Everything and the new entries will all have the path of the folder. If instead of copying them you want to move them, click Move and the entries won't be duplicated in Everything, but the paths will change.  This is very handy to find information on your computer that you may have forgotten and move or copy it to where you want it.  To be helpful with this method you need to have a systematic way of naming the files so that Everything can find them.  I use the file naming convention of giving a characteristic name to the file and adding a date in the International Date format YYYY-MM-DD at the end of the file name.  Then when Everything finds the files, they are sorted chronologically without having to sort by date.  Also with this convention I can find all files that I worked on on a particular day or month, or those with certain names and in certain years.
 
2.  Q-DIR
Available from  http://www.portablefreeware.com/?id=1431 .  Download the 32-bit or 64-bit version that you need (Buttons near the top) and avoid installing the ZipOpener or Download Manager with their additional bloatware.  It can also be installed as a portable version on a flash drive.  We discussed this program in Feb 2013 also, but here we emphasis the copy feature of Q-Dir.  This program is like having two or more copies of Windows Explorer (that's *Windows* Explorer, not Internet Explorer) open at the same time.  This allows you to work in one panel without changing the properties of the other panels, e.g. you can sort the panels differently or highlight files in one panel, but not the others.  This is very helpful when you want to sort or copy files from one folder into several other folders since Q-Dir allows you to form up to 4 panels arranged in various ways.  You can have two panels side-by-side, two top-and-bottom, three side-by-side, three folders with one on top and two side-by-side below, etc.  So, if you want to copy or sort files from one folder into three folders, for example, set Q-Dir to have 4 panels and select the original folder in one panel and open the other three folders in the other three panels.  Then copy or move files from the original folder to any of the others.  This allows you to see what you are copying or moving, how many files are left to copy or move, and to see how the new folders are building up.  If you accidentally copy a file to the wrong folder, just drag it to where it belongs.

3. FASTCOPY
Available from  http://ipmsg.org/tools/fastcopy.html.en .   See  http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-file-copy-utility.htm  for reviews and best copy program award.  This is a fast copy program with several features.  It has various modes such as copy if same filename doesn't exist in destination; copy if size or date is different, or if it doesn't exist; copy if source file timestamp is newer or doesn't exist; always copy/overwrite; and copy if size or date is different, or doesn't exist.  It has additional options such as delete all destination files/directories that don't exist in the source.  These options are very helpful to keep your directories and files up-to-date.  FastCopy also has the option to verify that the files are copied correctly and to skip problem files that it finds, but keep track and show them to you at the end.

Each of these programs is very helpful with file maintenance and that seems to be major problem on computers.

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