I have read the manual about Collections, and seen a video on setting it up, but I am rather confused as to how I would find it useful.
I currently have around 5 external hard drives with files on them that I have recorded over a long period of time onto an Excel spreadsheet - so I know exactly where to locate them.
Using the excellent integration of Opus/Everything, it's straightforward finding my individual files anyway.
What do you use Collections for ? (Are they any different from my spreadsheet?)
I had a collection of sound files. They should be located in their original directories, e.g. soundtrack of some game should be located in sub-directory of Program Files. I could not move them but I could bring them to dedicated collection and I later had access to them from the collection. Files remain in their original place, but path to them and their names are stored in collection.
Consider collections as workbenches where files from different folders can be gathered. Use them to compile images for reviewing, resizing, zipping, mailing, or posting. Collect files and archives for easy handling with the Find panel. Similar to physical workbenches, collections are best suited for short-term storage rather than long-term retention. Note that collections only store references to the actual files.
I use a collection to gather up a load of separate directories scattered all over the place so they appear like they're all part of one single drive. This is useful for having one view that is comprised of a whole pile of different things.
Thinks of them as windows libraries from the win7 era, thou with more functionality if you set them up with dynamic searches.
I have never used windows libraries.
But I have found a few simple use cases for dopus collection\libraries
Example... I have 9 hard drives in my rig. Loaded with media, digital hoarders style games, movies, ebooks, etc etc, .
With a store query I'm one click away from finding, say, all the movies and\or archive files that are larger 15Gs scattered across 9 different drives, but in one list.
Everything can do similar saved searches. They label them as Bookmarks.
All great ideas. Thanks. I am going to have another look at Collections.
My last question on them. How do you do a 'store query'?
When I made a collection the top right hand search said Everything was unavailable. The Ctrl F find when used with a collection, gave no results. Please can you explain in easy terms as I have only been using Opus a few days Thanks so much.
Start here! I set a handful of mine up using his method. Dopus is so versatile & customizable there's more than one way to get task done.
And stick to the forums. I've learned a great many things dopus can do from copying post and I still bearly scratch the surface. I've been using 4 years. Can't navigate windows without it now.
I use collections to backup files and folders. I just drag files/folders into a collection and then export the collection to a text file which is used by a command line archiver like rar or zip.
I have a button on my toolbar to open the collection or just for adding files/folders to the collection via drag and drop onto the button. Whats great about the collection is that it persists, so over time you can just keep adding files and folders you need backed up
(especially software setting files in the appdata folders, I cannot afford to lose settings for my key apps) App Data.dcf (314 Bytes)
I use collections for many more things, the attached button allows me to have a drop down menu of items I need on tap, and I can just drag things onto the button to add them.
It's like a custom start menu and I have multiple. Executables.dcf (990 Bytes)
I also use collections for dumping my favorite mp3s from multiple directories. This is quite useful. I have several collections for these as well. I like things on tap!
This is what I'm struggling with - I need help with the windows queries. I tried a collection with a folder full of jpg's and a query of 'size >1mb ext:jpg' - no results, using everything (Global) . Tried several different combinations with no results. I have no knowledge of windows 10/11 windows search queries as I have always used the void Everything tool!!
Can you anyone give me some help (or pointers), so that I can try some collections and find results?
Update: I finally got results but if I just add the coll://Test folder I still get no results!
Thanks - when you have time please help me if you can with the queries, no rush. Auto refresh I think you mean?
That's not the issue. I just would like to be able to search a collection for files on my external hard drives when they are switched off. As a useful database - I currently have complete listings on a spreadsheet
@xaviermand Can you please clarify (as a new user) the difference to having the Opus backups (which I am saving to OneDrive) + backing up appdata? (Which I could strat daily backups with Macrium).
games, movies, ebooks, etc etc, .
Thanks so much.
