I am having trouble figuring out/controlling how dopus selects the folder or folders to delete files when i run a duplicate check. in different situations, i want to delete the older or the more recent or the ones with a longer name or the ones with specific kinds of names. generally, i have no problem collecting the candidate files that will probably be deleted into one folder. my problem is that i cannot easily predict which folder dopus will favor for deletion, and that means that i have to examine all of the proposed duplicate deletions.
I tried to attach an example screen shot but this forum wont accept docx or pdf files. The example shows where i asked dopus to look at filenames and delete files with the same file name. in this case, i wanted to delete the smaller files. The smaller files were collected into one folder and compared to larger files in another folder.
Unfortunately the duplicate finder does not always select the file(s) to be deleted from the same folder. In this example, it usually selects the “larger” file path to keep, but in some cases it selects the “smaller” file to keep. This means I have to check through all the files being compared, which is very tedious, and then click to reverse the delete-keep choice, which is prone to error as well as tedious.
Unfortunately i cannot post the file and i cannot drag and drop the screenshot.
(Screenshots can be uploaded in image formats: jpg, png, gif.)
When the duplicate finder selects which files to keep and which to delete, it always keeps the first file in each group. This can be changed by changing how the files are sorted.
For example, if you sort the results by Date Modified, then click the Select button in the duplicate finder, it will keep the oldest or newest files (depending on which way up the list is sorted).
Hi Leo, i may be misunderstanding or i may have altered something in the preferences, but you are saying that dopus duplicate finder always keeps the first file in each group. i have not found this to work for me. I wanted to always delete the smaller file when two files had the same name. As the example shows, i collected the larger files into one folder. i collected the smaller files into a separate folder, alphabetically following and with a longer path than the larger. Nevertheless, sometimes Dopus selected the larger file for deletion and sometimes it selected the smaller file. for example in the attachment, dopus wants to delete the smaller file in pairs 1 to 4, and 6-9 but in pair 5 it proposes deleting the larger file.
It is true that i could click on size (or in other cases based on date not size, i could click on modified date) once the files had been checked and matched, ready for deletion. but sorting the files at this point only meant that i could be sure that the smaller file was always listed second (as shown in the example). It doesn't mean that the smaller file is always automatically selected as the deletion candidate. therefore, i had to go in and check each pair and manually adjust the file to be deleted when dopus selected the larger file by mistake.
If i knew the rules that dopus uses to select the specific file it plans to delete, i could follow them. if not, then it would be wonderful if dopus would consider this enhancement - allow a check off box to say if duplicates are found, then delete from this folder group.
