Stop synchronize from changing folder dates?

Synchronize works really well, excellent tool!

However, I just synchronized a folder from my main drive to a folder I'd previously copied onto a thumb drive - and it changed the folder dates on the folders where files had changed.

I really use the ability to sort folders by date of creation and would like the dates to exactly match the source folder dates (but of course, to optionally change the folder date if that's what a user wants).

  1. Can this be done?

  2. Is there a way to save a source & destination (and settings) as a named 'synchronization set' so that I could easily perform exactly the same synchronization again?

Folder dates are very fragile and probably not something you should be relying on. If you create, delete or rename any file or sub-folder within a folder, the folder's date changes. That's why the timestamps changed when you copied files into the folders via sync. Trying to preserve them is thus usually futile, as they'll only change again the moment you do something to the folder.

You can have a column in Opus which reports the timestamp of the most recent file within each folder, which might work better

Hi Leo - that timestamp column sounds like a good solution!!

Is there a way to save a synchronization 'named set'? I can see that I'll be using it often with a different source/dest from the previous time, but often re-using the same source/dest at a later time?

Is there an FAQ for setting that up? I right clicked on the column headers and look around in the Date and Time options, but didn't see any column types that would do that?

It's an add-in script:

Wow - I'm always amazed at what can be done with Directory Opus!!

I wish you would bring out a version for MacOS? Cocoatech's Path Finder just isn't in the same league - there's really a need for a good file manager on MacOS.

Thanks!!

That Mac thing will never catch on :slight_smile:

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I added a button to execute the series of commands to add/remove 2 columns as shown in the tech note:
"@ifset:COLUMNSTOGGLE="scp:Newest File Column/NewestFileDateRec" etc.

that works quite well.

Is it possible to change the width of the columns added, and change the width of existing columns, at the same time using the code in the command?

Yes, you can specify the widths of added and existing columns in commands. The Set command documentation says how to do it, under the descriptions of the COLUMNSADD/SET/TOGGLE arguments.