Using the software

This software will always create a new workbook and put the listing in there. You can then choose whether to save or discard the workbook.

At the top left of the screen you click to select a drive or folder location to analyse. You can either type it in or pick it.

You click Run in order to make the Listing - either files, folders or both can be listed.

You can cancel during running and for large listings the software may appear to hang (even show as not responding) - this is normally simply Windows managing memory and you should give the software reasonable time to recover.

The software will attempt to produce some additional picture information (eg dimensions, camera info) for most of the more common image types ie JPG, JPEG, JFIF, GIF, BMP, DIB, PNG, TIF, TIFF.

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Run Options

Tip: Right-click any checkbox to set the default to your preference.

1. List files / List folders - either one or both of these should be selected.

2. List zip file contents creates a new worksheet and attempts to list out the contents of each zip file it finds. This uses standard Windows zip features and requires no additional software.

3. Exclude hidden and system files/folders allows your listing to ignore these items - we recommend you normally leave this checked. Use the utmost care before deleting or in any way altering hidden files/folders and especially those marked as System Files/Folders. If you include these items they will show in red in the listing.

4. Exclude subfolders means only the contents of the actual folder you select will be listed and not any folders beneath.

5. Sort by UniqueFileID* and mark duplicates will sort the listing on that column at the end, and will insert a new column showing you duplicates of UniqueFileID.

* Notes on UniqueFileID

This is a key made up of the short file name, date last modified and file size. If these are all identical then it is very likely (but not certain) that these files are copies of each other stored in different folders. This can be useful in finding where disk space is being wasted, for example.

Once you have your data in Microsoft Excel you can analyse it any way you wish, and you can even run multiple listings and copy and paste them into one place to find more duplicates etc (we recommend the PATools Data Toolkit to help find duplicates).

It is strongly recommended that you check before deleting any files marked as duplicates. This marking simply shows files with identical names, date last modified and size. It is no guarantee that the file contents are identical.

No responsibility whatsoever for any loss of data or losses arising as a result of the use or misuse of this tool can be taken by PATools (see the EULA and disclaimer supplied).

6. Extended file info will slow the program down dramatically but will list out to the right extended file information such as copyright, ratings, etc. Since different versions of Windows use these fields differently, and different files use the same field for different uses, we do not attempt to add column headings. We suggest you try this on a small sample of media files to see the results.

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General Notes, Tips and Precautions

1. Although the software is well tested and written, we would recommend as good practice that any data and template workbooks be saved and backed-up before running this software, as it is impossible to protect against every possibility of system crashes, printer problems, etc causing runtime problems that may damage your data.

2. For this, as with any software, the best way to evaluate it and make it work for you is to play with it using dummy data until you become comfortable and are ready to use it for real.

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