DE

X

• AllDup
• Description
• Requirements
• Download
• Version History
• Screenshots
• Awards
• Publications

• Help
• Manual

• Supporting
• Donate
• Translation

• Web
• Links

File Manager

The file manager enables you to delete, copy, move or rename the selected files from the search result.

• Which groups should be processed?
• What action is to be performed?
• Backup folder
• Options
• Examples

Which groups should be processed?

• All groups (ignore filter)
• Only groups displayed by the filter

Don't process any groups with all files selected

This option ensures that not all files in a group are deleted.

What action is to be performed?

Actions 2, 3, 4 and 5 do not affect selected files located in an archive file (Zip, Rar, etc.).

1. Delete files

   This action deletes the selected files on the storage medium and frees up storage space. If you delete files from archives and the file to be deleted is the only file in the archive, then the archive file is always deleted. Deleting files from an archive with multiple files inside is only possible with Zip- or 7z-archives. Deleting files from archives that contain multiple files is only possible for archives with the extension .zip and .7z.
   With the Secure delete option, the file content is completely overwritten with zeros before deletion and the file size is set to 0.
   
   

2. Move local files to the Windows Recycle Bin

   With this action, the selected files are moved to the Windows recycle bin. An error message is displayed if there is no Windows Recycle Bin on the data carrier of the file to be deleted. With the option Delete file if there is no recycle bin no error message is displayed and the file is deleted.
   Important notes:
   • Make sure that the Windows Recycle Bin is activated on the partition of the selected files.
   • The available disk space for the Windows Recycle Bin should be set to 100%.
   • Files that are located on the data medium of another computer are not moved to the Windows Recycle Bin; they are deleted!
   • Files stored in archives cannot be moved to the Windows Recycle Bin.
   
   

3. Copy files to a folder

   This action allows you to copy the selected files to a folder.
   
   

4. Move files to a folder

   This action allows you to move the selected files to a folder.
   
   

5. Rename files

   This action allows you to rename the selected files. Please note that the following characters cannot be used in a file name under Windows: \ / : * ? < > | "
   The following placeholders can be used for the new name:
   

   Placeholder	Description
   %NAME%	File name without file extension
   %EXT%	File extension with leading dot (.txt)
   %FOLDER%	Name of the folder in which the file is located
   %GNAME%	Name¹ of the group in which the file is located
   %FNAME%	Name of the first file in the group
   %LNAME%	Name of the last file in the group
   %CDATE%	File creation date¹. The displayed creation date from the search result is used.
   %MDATE%	File modified date¹. The displayed modified date from the search result is used.
   %PDATE%	Picture creation date¹ (JPG, TIF, PNG). For this purpose, the Exif property DateTimeOriginal is read out, which is in the following format: "YYYY:MM:DD HH:MM:SS". The creation date of the file is used if no creation date could be found in the Exif data.
   %YYYY%	Year (4-digit)
   %YY%	Year (2-digit)
   %MM%	Month (2-digit)
   %DD%	Day (2-digit)
   %HH%	Hour (2-digit)
   %NN	Minute (2-digit)
   %SS%	Second (2-digit)

   ¹ Characters that are not allowed in a file name are automatically replaced with an underscore (_).

Show file protection note

This option shows a warning message before the selected files will be deleted, moved or renamed.

Backup Folder

Here you specify the folder to which the files should be copied or moved.

Create subfolders in the backup folder

This option allows you to create additional subfolders within the folder. Various Date and Time placeholders and Windows environment variables can be used to create a new folder name. Please note that normal text must be enclosed in quotation marks when using date and time placeholders. See examples:

Text: "Backup of" %USERNAME% "on" yyyy-mm-dd "at" hh_nn_ss
Folder: Backup of John on 2011-02-26 at 10_15_00

Text: "%USERNAME%\"YYYY-MM-DD HH-NN-SS
Folders: John\2011-02-26 10-15-00

Save files with their folder structure in the backup folder

This option saves all files with their folder structure in the specified folder. If you deactivate the option, all files will be saved directly in the specified folder without their folder structure. Existing files are renamed before being overwritten by appending a consecutive number after the file name. For example, the Data.txt file is renamed to Data-001.txt before being overwritten.

Options

Create Shortcuts

This option enables you to create a shortcut (.lnk) at the place of all files that will be deleted or removed. The shortcut will be point to the first file that is not selected at the same group; see Example for Shortcuts.

Create Hard Links

This option allows all selected files in a group to be linked together by replacing the files with a hard link. This has the advantage that the content of all linked files is only saved once on the hard disk and storage space can be saved. For example, if you link 1000 files with the same content and a size of 10 MB per file, then more than 9 GB of disk space is freed up! See Example for hard links.

Notes

• Only files stored on the same volume can be linked together.
• The files must be stored on a local NTFS partition.
• Hard links cannot be created on a network drive.
• Hard links cannot be created in a virtual folder that points to the data from an external source, such as local delivery of files from a cloud.
• At least 2 files have to be selected in a group to create hard links.
• The Windows file system has a limit of 1024 hard links on a file.
• AllDup automatically determine a source file with a hard link count lower than 1024 of all selected files in a group. All other selected files in this group will be linked with this source file.
• A new source file will be determined as soon as the current source file reaches 1024 hard links. This allows you to create an unlimited number of hard links for each group.
• The file context menu command 'Move to the top of the group' enables you to specify the source file to create hard links if needed.
• Only files with a hard link count of zero can be linked to the source file. The hard link count will be checked by the value displayed at the column 'Hard links'. You need to activate the search option Determine the hard link count for each file so that the hard link count for each file will be determined during the search.
• Files stored inside an archive will be skipped.

Remove all processed files from the search result

This option removes any processed file from the search result.

Remove all groups with only one file from the search result

With this option all groups with only one file will be removed from the search result.

Don't show cancel dialog if an error occurred

This option causes to continue the selected file action after an error occurred while processing a file.

Delete all folders that are empty after moving or deleting files

This option deletes all empty folders that previously contained files.

Don't log any file actions (faster)

This option disables the logging of the file actions.

After action is completed

• Close file manager
• Exit AllDup

Examples

Create Hard Links

The search result contains a group with the following files:

1. C:\Work\notes.txt
2. C:\User\readme.txt
3. C:\Backup\notes.txt
4. C:\Mail\new-user-readme.txt

All files in this group are selected (☑). The first file in the group is automatically used as the source file for creating the hard links. All other files (2-4) are deleted and a hard link is created to the first file, with the hard link having the same name as the deleted file.

Create Shortcuts

The search result contains a group with the following files:

1. C:\Work\notes.txt
2. C:\User\readme.txt
3. C:\Backup\notes.txt
4. C:\Mail\new-user-readme.txt

The first file is unselected and will be used as the source file for the shortcuts to be created. All other files (2-4) in the group are selected (☑). The selected files are now deleted one after the other and a shortcut is created to the first file, with the shortcut being given the name of the deleted file.