tag duplicates by the shortest path lengths.
often (at least with me) files are initially stored in 1 folder and lateron, when the number gets to big, or files involve special topics, they are stored in sub\sub folders.
ideal situation is that they move from the source location, but in real life, with backups restores, copying here there.. well, that isn't so.
One starts out with \Cars
but lateron it evolves to \Cars\Trademark\Type\Subtype.
Obviously, the longest pathnames often is the most organized.
An option to auto select/tag files in the shortest path might be useful.
(note that some duplicate file finders have that option, see below)
You can do that already, just sort the list by location and click the duplicate finder's Select button.
The first file in each group is always the one which the Select button will leave (while selecting the others for deletion), so you can influence which file that is by changing how things are sorted.
In the results panel - sort on Location
Click on Select
It will start out to select the shortest paths, but scrolling down I noticed longest path (I mean location) is selected.
The actual, full path, it is very difficult to display those: they can be upto 200-240 characters, however, column Path Length
shows what I mean.
It's difficult to comment on how the selection by location has worked when you've blanked out all the locations. If the paths are all top-secret, create a similar situation in another location using some dummy/test files so we have something we can look at and talk about.
If you literally want the shortest path by number of characters (not the first path alphabetically), then sort by the Path Length field instead of the Location field.
From my point of view the filenames are not relevant and actually show what they are about, which is not intended to be placed on Internet.
However, I did leave most the last characters in place to show the length of filenames/paths.
When sorting on Path Length with subsequent clicking on the Select-button many files are correctly selected, but then again quite some aren't,
so, as for me, I don't think I will use this method (no offence meant, of course!)
If the paths are all top-secret, create a similar situation in another location using some dummy/test files so we have something we can look at and talk about.
