DE EN

• About AllDup
• Product Description
• System Requirements
• Important Notes

• AllDup Main Window
• Main Window
• Source Folder
• Search Methods
• Search Options
• Archive Files
• Database
• File Filter
• Folder Filter
• Windows Environment Variables
• File Preview
• Profiles
• Saved Search Results
• Options
• Update Tool

• Search Result
• Search Result
• Menu Bar / Toolbar
• Context Menus
• File Manager
• Keyboard Shortcuts

• Miscellaneous
• Command Line
• Text Placeholders
• Date and Time Placeholders
• Speed Comparison Byte-by-Byte vs. SHA-1

File Manager

With the File Manager, you can delete, copy, move, or rename selected files from the search result.

• Which groups should be processed?
• Which action should be performed?
• Folder
• Options
• Examples

Which groups should be processed?

• All groups (ignore filter)
  Processes all groups, regardless of the active filter.
• Only groups displayed by the filter
  Processes only the currently visible groups.

Do not process groups where all files are selected
Prevents complete groups from being deleted.

Which action should be performed?

The following actions are available:

1. Delete files
2. Move local files to the Windows Recycle Bin
3. Copy files to a folder
4. Move files to a folder
5. Rename files

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

1. Delete files
   Permanently deletes selected files from the storage medium.
   • Files from archives:
     • If the file is the only one in the archive → archive will be deleted.
     • Deletion from .zip and .7z is possible, not from other formats.
   • Secure deletion: Overwrites file content with zeros and sets file size to 0.
2. Move local files to the Windows Recycle Bin
   
   • An error message is displayed if there is no Windows Recycle Bin on the disk where the file to be deleted is located.
   • With the option Delete file if no Recycle Bin is available, no error message is displayed, and the file is deleted.
   • Important notes:
     • The Recycle Bin must be enabled on the storage medium.
     • The storage space for the Recycle Bin should be set to 100%.
     • Files on non-local drives are deleted and not moved to the Recycle Bin.
     • Files stored in archives cannot be moved to the Recycle Bin.
3. Copy files to a folder
   Copies the selected files to a folder.
4. Move files to a folder
   Moves the selected files to a folder.
5. Rename files
   Changes the names of the selected files.
   • Invalid characters: \ / : * ? < > | "
   • Supported placeholders:

   Placeholder	Description
   %NAME%	File name without file extension
   %EXT%	File extension with dot (e.g. .txt)
   %FOLDER%	Folder name of the file
   %GNAME%	Group name¹ of the file
   %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 modification date¹. The displayed modification date from the search result is used.
   %PDATE%	Exif creation date¹ (JPG, TIF, PNG). For this, the Exif property DateTimeOriginal is read, which is in the format YYYY:MM:DD HH:MM:SS. If no Exif date is available, the creation date of the file is used.
   %YYYY%	Year (4-digits)
   %YY%	Year (2-digits)
   %MM%	Month (2-digits)
   %DD%	Day (2-digits)
   %HH%	Hours (2-digits)
   %NN%	Minutes (2-digits)
   %SS%	Seconds (2-digits)

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

Security notice
Displays a confirmation dialog before deleting, moving, or renaming.

Backup folder

Here you define the folder into which the files are to be copied or moved.

• create subfolders in the backup folder
  With this option, you can create additional subfolders in the backup folder. Various placeholders for date and time and Windows environment variables can be used to create a new folder name. Please note that normal text must be enclosed in quotation marks if you use date and time placeholders.
  Examples:
  
  • Text:Backup "of" %USERNAME% "on" yyyy-mm-dd "at" hh_nn_ss
    Folder name:Backup of John on 2023-02-17 at 10_15_00
  • Text: "%USERNAME%"\YYYY-MM-DD HH-NN-SS
    Folder name: John\2023-02-17 10-15-00
• Save files with their folder structure in the backup folder
  With this option, all files are saved with their folder structure in the backup folder. If you deactivate this option, all files will be saved directly in the backup folder without their folder structure. Existing files are renamed before overwriting by appending a sequential number to the file name: the file Data.txt is renamed to Data-001.txt before overwriting.

Options

• create shortcuts
  With this option, after deleting or moving a file, a shortcut (.lnk) to the first unselected (☐) file in the same group is created at the same location. See shortcut example.
• create hard links
  With this option, all selected files in a group can be linked together by replacing the files with a hard link. This has the advantage that the content of all linked files is stored only once on the hard disk, saving storage space. For example, if you link 1000 files with identical content, each 10 MB in size, you will free up over 9 GB of hard disk space. See hard link example.
  
  Notes
  • Only files located on the same partition 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 refers to data from an external source, such as the local provision of files from a cloud.
  • At least 2 files in a group must be selected (☑).
  • On Windows, a file can have a maximum of 1024 hard links.
  • AllDup automatically determines a source file from all selected files in a group that has less than 1024 hard links. All other selected files in this group are then linked to this source file.
  • Once the source file has 1024 hard links, another source file is automatically determined. This allows you to create an unlimited number of hard links in a group.
  • With the file context menu command Move to top in group, you can define the source file for creating hard links.
  • Files that are already linked are automatically skipped. The number of existing hard links for a file is checked based on the displayed value in the Hard links column. To do this, enable the search option Determine the number of hard links per file so that the correct number of hard links is determined for each file.
  • Files located in archives are automatically skipped.
• Remove all processed files from the search result
  Removes all processed files from the search result.
• Remove all groups with only one file from the search result
  Removes all groups with only one file from the search result.
• Do not display an abort dialog for error messages
  With this option, the operation continues in case of an error message without an abort dialog.
• Delete all folders that are empty after moving or deleting files
  With this option, all empty folders that previously contained files are deleted.
• Do not log file actions (faster)
  With this option, the performed file actions are not logged.
• After the action is completed
  The following action can be selected:
  • Close File Manager
  • Exit AllDup

Examples

• create hard links
  A group with the following files is in the search result:
  1. C:\User1\info.txt
  2. C:\User2\info.txt
  3. D:\User3\info.txt
  4. D:\User4\info.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 to 4) are deleted, and a hard link to the first file is created, with the hard link bearing the same name as the deleted file.
• create shortcuts
  The search result contains the following files in a group:
  1. C:\User1\info.txt
  2. C:\User2\info.txt
  3. D:\User3\info.txt
  4. D:\User4\info.txt
  The first file is not selected and is used as the source file for the shortcuts to be created. All other files (2 to 4) in the group are selected (☑). The selected files are deleted one after another, and a shortcut to the first file is created, with the shortcut bearing the name of the deleted file.