Can we create an "expiry date" for files / folders?

Help & Support
1

Hey all,

Can I create an expiry date on files and folders to keep my drives clean? I have screengrabs that I need to make, and need to use, but I don't need to keep them forever. If I could give them a lifespan of six months, say, and have them auto-destruct, that would be great. I'm sure the mighty Opus would make that possible, anyone? (Leo, obviously :slight_smile: )

All the best,

B

2

You could set up a filter which finds files to delete based on some criteria (age, filename, location), and then periodically click a button or hotkey which runs the delete command with that filter.

Script events could make it run automatically, although if you want something fully automated and in the background then I would probably use Task Scheduler or something, and not use Opus at all.

I think it's also possible to hook extra rules into the Windows disk clean-up tool, which could be a good fit for this, but I'm not sure how much work that involves.

3

Thanks, Leo,
I knew you'd get back to me :slight_smile: Task Scheduler seems to be a good route, but my choices are start a program or script. Could I use Start a program to call DOpus to delete files older than yay, in a specific directory and sub-directories?

Thanks,

B

4

You could use dopusrt.exe to run an Opus command from outside of Opus. https://www.gpsoft.com.au/help/opus12/index.html#!Documents/DOpusRT_Reference.htm

But if you're going the Task Scheduler route then it might be cleaner to just have it run a generic script which does everything without interacting with Opus.

5

just a batch file then? Thanks for your support Leo.

B

6

It might be possible with a batch file but I'm not sure. I'd probably use JScript to do it, since that has objects to let you search in/below a folder, checking names against regular expression and dates against your criteria.

Depends how comfortable you are with that though. What I'd do might not be best for you, of course!

7

Windows 10 has the ForFiles command, which seems like it ought to do the trick :slight_smile:

All the best,

B

8

That looks perfect. I didn't know that was there. :smiley:

9

Another option would be a stored query, if you could work out the AQS syntax :slight_smile: