ORGANIZING COMPUTER FILES, FINDING STRAYS, AND ELIMINATING
DUPLICATES
©2019 Donald R. Snow
This page was last updated 2019-05-04.
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ABSTRACT: A big problem when using computers for family history, or
anything else, is file maintenance. We all have lots of lost, duplicated,
old versions, and ill-named files on our computers. Most of us never get around to correcting this and they
just fill up our hard drives until we run out of space. This class will give
you some ideas using freeware programs to find, relabel, organize, and
eliminate duplicates of such files. The notes for this class and related
articles, all with active links, are posted on
https://uvtagg.org/classes/dons/dons-classes.html .
WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION
'
- Instructor is Donald R. Snow
(snowd@math.byu.edu)
of Provo and St. George, Utah.
- These notes and related articles, all with active Internet links, are posted on my website
http://uvtagg.org/classes/dons/dons-classes.html
- Tips: (1) To put an icon on your desktop for the URL
for these notes, or any webpage, just drag the icon that is in front of the address
in your browser to your desktop. (2) To open a link from here
in another tab so you keep your place in these notes, hold down the Control
key while clicking the link.
- The problem for today: Finding and organizing files,
lthose ost, duplicated, and to be eliminated, using helpful freeware
programs.
FILES AND NAMING
- Most of us have files scattered all over our computers, some
duplicated, and others lost because of
- Not taking time to check things when first working with
them
- Working on the same thing at different times
- Same file saved with different names
- Same file with same name, but in different folders
- The addage, "Handle it once.", is good advice for computers, as well as paper files, but no one does it all the
time
- Suggestion -- Decide on a file naming system
that suits the way you think and start using it; go back as needed to rename older files
- Here we will discuss the method I
have developed over several years so you can get ideas of what you want to do; then use parts of all of it, whatever you decide
- Examples of my file naming system
- People files -- so they sort in timeline order for each
person --
ManwaringDiane(Snow)(1934-2012)-2012-10-13-Obituary-SaltLakeDeseretNews-Ancestry-com--2014-04-10.pdf
- Photos -- so they sort in chronological order -- PHOTO-2004-01-20-10h23m16s--ManwaringDiane(Snow)(1934-2012)&SnowDonaldRay(1960-)InBarbadosArchives--P1200004.JPG
- Other types of files -- I use prefixes, e.g. LETTER- , ORDER-
, etc.
- Tags -- include as many as you want; e.g. BIRTH, MARRIAGE, DEATH, SCHOOL, EDUCATION, MILITARY, LDS, etc.
- More details of my system are in other notes and articles on my
website
- I use this system for new files and when I
find old ones that I need -- I haven't tried to go back
and redo all my files
THE PROGRAM EVERYTHING
- First problem is finding the files, strays, lost, and duplicated files
- EVERYTHING -- free from
https://www.voidtools.com/ -- is extremely helpful and is the best program I have found to find files anywhere on your computer with whatever search terms you look for
- Downloading and setting up EVERYTHING-- has many options that you can set for your own preferences
- The search results can be sorted on any column, i.e. by name,
path, size, date created or modified, etc., and each helps
for some things
- EVERYTHING has a view option to show you what' in the file without having to open it, so you can rename it without having to open it
- Examples of searching with EVERYTHING
- Files with same name, but in different folders, show up in the alphabetical search results, since it finds them
regardless of folder; can check the date, size, etc., to be
sure they are dups, and rename or delete them right in
EVERYTHING
- If only a few files need work, do it right in EVERYTHING; if
many files need work, make a note and do it later
- For many files to work on later I sometimes highlight them
in EVERYTHING and move them to a working folder
- To move many files use the Windows property of clicking on the top file, then
hold down the Shift key while clicking on the bottom
file; this highlights everything in between so you can
drag-and-drop the whole collection.
- When moving files to a new folder, if the new folder
already contains a file with that name, it stops and asks
whether to overwrite it or save both; by checking the file properties you can determine if it is the same and click to overwrite it; otherwise, tell it to save both and it adds a suffix number, e.g. _1 or _2 to the file name and and you can check for dups later
- As you rename files, if you don't use any of the search terms, they disappear from
the results list in EVERYTHING, but they are still on your computer
- Files you move, but don't rename, stay in the EVERYTHING results list, but their path location changes
- By sorting on the path in EVERYTHING you see which files
are not in the new folder and can highlight those to move them, if you want
FINDING DUPLICATES
- Tehre are many free duplicate file finders; one I particularly like is DUPLICATE CLEANER FREE available
from http://www.digitalvolcano.co.uk/duplicatecleaner.html
- Can be set to search
through any part of your hard drive; I usually run it on
just one large folder and subfolders
- Has settings to find
duplicates of various kinds, e.g. same file content
regardless of name, same size, etc.
- When run, it gathers
all the files and starts comparing for duplicates; works
fairly fast and shows the
duplicates in groups
- Has options for you to mark which
files to delete, e.g. mark them manually by putting check in box, or mark first in each group, or those with
the latest date, those with shortest names, etc.
- When done selecting, click button at top to see if you
have inadvertently checked all files in some group; this
is a safeguard so you don't delete all copies of a file,
unless you want to
- With files marked to delete there are several delete
methods, e.g. moving them to the Recycle bin or moving
them to another different folder which is not the recycle bin, etc.
- Program has some nice safeguards, so you don't delete
things you didn't want to
- Program could be run on your entire
hard drive, but would take a long time and would find so
many duplicates you would have a hard time working with
them all; I just use it on particular folders or groups
of folders and don't try to do everything at once
- Will discuss finding and eliminating duplicate photos
later
RENAMING FILES
- After eliminating duplicates in a folder you can rename the remaining files
- If only a few files need fixing, do it right in EVERTHING
- If many files need renaming, can use BULK RENAME UTILITY - free
program from http://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk/Main_Intro.php
- Examples it will do -- add a prefix
to every file in the folder, or change specific words in
all titles, or add words at certain places in each file name; looks complicated, but isn't hard to begin using for
simple renaming projects
- When you have your files named in a uniform way, if you decide to change systems later, it's easy to do; hard part is getting them all named in uniform way
- Suggestions for naming
- To get numbers to sort correctly you may have to add leading zero's, e.g. the numbers 1, 2, 3, 12, 13, 14 may not
sort in order unless written as 01, 02, 03, 12, 13, 14, or 001, 002, 003, 012, 013,
014 -- number of leading zero's depends on how many digits the largest number contains
- For particular collections you may want to add a prefix
LETTER- to the file name; I usually use a hyphen "-" at end of the tag so I can sort for the tag, e.g. LETTER-, and not get all occurrences of "letter" in any title
- Writing dates in International Date format,
YYYY-MM-DD, makes them sort chronologically.
FINDING DUPLICATE PHOTOS
- Finding and deleting duplicate photos deserves a class
by itself, but a helpful free program is AWESOME DUPLICATE PHOTO FINDER available from http://www.duplicate-finder.com/photo.html
- With this program installed you select the folder to check and
it finds all "similar" photos and shows you the list
with percent similarity
- Sort the list by percent similarity with the 100%
similar at top
- It shows you the photos side-by-side and you select
which to delete or you can keep both
- Takes time to look at each
pair, but you see all possible pairs and can decide which to
delete
FILE EXPLORER HAS A PREVIEW PANE
- FILE EXPLORER used to be called WINDOWS EXPLORER in earlier versions of Windows
- Current versions have a helpful Preview Pane like EVERYTHING
- Preview Pane allows you to
see what's in a file and you can rename it without
having to open it
- Default of FILE EXPLORER has Preview Pane
turned off; to turn it on click on the icon in the
middle of the top
- When Preview Pane is on, as your cursor passes over the title, you see what's
in the file; e.g. for doc's you see the text, for jpg's
you see the picture; can even scroll down through all
pages of a multi-page file this way without opening it
- Allows renaming files without having to open them and trying to remember
what's in them; saves countless mouse clicks; works like EVERYTHING
MOVING FILES TO SEPARATE FOLDERS
- With the files named so
they are findable they show up in EVERYTHING regardless
of their location, but you might want to move collections into separate folders for better organization
- Highlight the group in EVERYTHING, for example, and drag-and-dorp to the other folder
- With files named uniformly and in a single folder they sort in chronological order without using EVERYTHING
- With files named
uniformly, you can easily change any words to any other
words by using BULK RENAME UTILITY -- hard part is getting the names uniform
in the first place
-
SOME THINGS TO BE CAREFUL OF
- Don't delete system files
that your computer needs to work correctly. To
help prevent this set the option in EVERYTHING to NOT show
system files.
- Some files, usually small ones, with the same name are
needed in different locations, since certain programs
need them there; if you are not sure of a file,
don't delete it. As a rule, if you named
the file originally, you are probably safe in renaming, moving, or deleting it.
- You may want to keep duplicate copies of some files,
e.g. your journal or photos, even though they are
exactly the same with the same names; I have two
complete copies of my daily journal with exactly the
same names, but on two different hard drives; can tell
EVERYTHING not to index certain folders, so those files
never show up in EVERYTHING
CONCLUSIONS
- File maintenance is a major task and takes time, but helps you get organized, saves time in the long run, and may make your computer run faster, if you hard drives aren't nearly full.
- I hope you got a few ideas from this that will help
with your files.
Return to the Utah Valley Technology and Genealogy Group
Home Page or Don Snow's Class Listings Page .