Windows Managing Files
Explorer substitutes
- ExploreXP - (freeware). Has the great advantage of folder and file size and is interoperable with Windows Explorer. It can copy and paste, and drag and drop both to and from Windows Explorer.
- Q-Dir - (freeware) is a file explorer with a multi-pane view. Each pane shows a folder. These can be different folders or the same folder sorted in a different order. It can show 1, 2, 3 or 4 panes at the same time. The panes can be tiled, horizontally, vertically or both. This multi-pane view layout can be saved and later restored. This is useful for repeated working on the same set of folders. Multiple different sets of folders and layouts can be saved as a current state. Each state can be restored, without affecting the other states.
- RidNacs - (freeware) is a disk space analyzer. It shows folder and file sizes in a folder. It shows the largest files and folders and also empty folders.
- There are others such as CubicExplorer and xplorer2 lite - but the benefits are not obvious.
- There are some circumstances where Windows Explorer is very slow - particularly bulk move and bulk delete from multiple sub folders. A useful tool to overcome this is "Rename Us" which has move and delete built-in to it.
Searching in Windows
- By default Windows searches not only for filename, but also for file contents. You may not want this. You can ensure it searches only for filename by using these codes.
Renamers
- Renamer6.0 - (freeware). Fast to load, supports macros.
- RenamerNG - (freeware). Development of Renamer6.0, supports macros with regular expressions, but not as fast as Renamer6.0.
- Flexible Renamer - (freeware). Can change case, add folder name to filename etc.
- Rename Us - (freeware). Actually used for batch delete.
Backup & Download
- Computer backup: automated local or online
- SyncBack - (freeware). Backup to e.g. external hard drive.
- JDownloader - (freeware). Download management tool.
File and string manipulation utilities
- ls - (freeware). Produces a text file which list the files in folder and a lot more.
- hjsplit - (freeware). Breaks a file up into pieces. Either by number of lines or bytes.
- Tabs To Spaces (CLR) - (shareware). Converts Tabs To Spaces. Useful for pasting an extracted spreadsheet into a text file and maintaining columnar layout
- WinXs - (shareware). Unix style file and string manipulation utilities for Windows.
Misc
- PowerArchiver-2002 - (shareware). Compresses to zip or unpacks from zip, lots of files in one shot
- TreeComp - (freeware). Compare 2 directory trees, show differences and optionally synchronize the files within the directories.
LAST UPDATED: 02 February 2018 (Bluetooth File Transfer)