I'm a great fan of Directory Opus' Synchronize function. But, I'd like to offer a suggestion to improve upon it.
Currently, Directory Opus starts the 'Compare' process in the current folder and compares its entire content (optionally including sub-folders) to a second folder. However, frequently I only want to synchronize specific sub-folders.
Of course I realize I can navigate into each of the sub-folders and just start the Compare and Synchronize process from there, but that's a bit of a chore - more so because it's frequently a couple of really large folders which take a while to sync.
My suggestion: if a number of folders and files is selected in the source panel before Compare, limit the comparison to those files and folders and excluded the rest of the folder content from the compare. And probably: make this optional (default: off) with a check box in the Synchronize utility panel.
This way, I could just quickly select a handful of folders I need synced, start the compare and the compare result will only include files from the selected folders. From there on, it's the same as the current situation, so it seems to me that this is a fairly easy to add function that would save people like myself a lot of time.
Currently, I do this by just comparing the entire folder and then deselecting the folders I don't want to sync, but just running the compare on the massive folders I want to exclude alone takes quite some time and the list of files I have to go through to deselect them is enormous.
Another feature I'd really like (but which seems like a lot more work to create) would be the ability to collapse and expand the compare results to allow for easier selection and navigation. But that would just be gravy .
(I've merged the threads, else someone might find one and not the other, and not see the replies.)
You can filter which sub-folders are Synchronized by turning on the Filter option in the Synchronize panel and filtering on Location or Full Path.
More about that can be found here:
Note that the "Subfolder" filtering is more efficient but, as the page says, cannot be used for Synchronize (at least currently). "Subfolder" is better when doing a Find or a filtered copy/move/delete, but not for a sync. Use "Location" or "Full Path" instead when synching.
Perhaps I misunderstand the Filter functionality. But if I define a filter like this:
It doesn't work, because it still selects everything in the starting folder. But if I instead define Full Path filters for '*\test*' etc., it does. Which was surprising, considering the content of this post Copy filter - full path
Also, '*\test*' etc. does work, but I don't like it, because it will also select 'some\deeper\folder\test*' which I'm not interested in. However, specifying 'test*' doesn't work, which leads me to assume DOpus doesn't use the current folder for the source as a root for the filter? How should I include the source root in the filter expression to only select 'test' and its contents, 'run' and its contents, etc. from the current folder?
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