Selecting Duplicates in the File List Window

    Once File Buddy has marked one or more groups of duplicate files in the file list window, you can use the Select Duplicates command to select subsets of each group.
    The selection can be based on position in the list, or modified date and file location.

Selecting the First Item in Each Group

    Use the "First item in each group" option to select the first item in each group as the list is traversed from top to bottom. This option would normally be used after sorting the list by a criteria that would sort the list so that the best items to select are near the top.
    To reverse the current selections in the list, open the List menu and choose Reverse from the Select submenu.
    If the "First item in each group" option is checked, the date and location pop-up menus are dimmed and not available.

Selecting by Modification Date

    Duplicate files can be selected with a group according to date using a pop-up menu in the Select Duplicates dialog. The options are:

    without regard to date
    Ignore modification dates and select files on the basis of location only.
    all but most recently modified
    Look through each group and find the most recently modified file. Select all files in the group with older modification dates. Since more than one file can have the same modification date, multiple files, or even all files in a group may remain unselected. It will never be the case that all files in a group are selected.
    most recently modified
    Look through each group and find the most recently modified file. Select all files in the group with that date. At least one file will be selected in each group, and possibly more. If all files in a group have the same modification date, all of them will be selected.
    oldest modification date
    Look through each group and find the file with the oldest modification date. Select all files in the group with that date. At least one file will be selected in each group, and possibly more. If all files in a group have the same modification date, all of them will be selected.

Selecting by Location

    without regard to location
    Ignore locations and select files on the basis of modification dates only. The Select button is not available if both "without regard to date" and "without regard to location"
    files in folder or volume...
    Select only those files in a specified folder (or its subfolders) or disk.
    files not in folder of volume...
    Select files not in a specified folder (or its subfolders) or disk.

One Last Option

    If selecting files to be deleted, the "Never select all files in a group" option guarantees that at least one file in every group will remain unselected. If all files in a group would be selected otherwise, the file in the group that is positioned farthest down the list is the one left unselected. Since the files do not need to be together in the list, the list can be sorted by a column such a label or version before selecting, and that can affect which file is left unselected.

 


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