Macintosh Explorer offers a wide variety of file management tools to help you work with and organize your files and folders. This section will help you get familiar with the various tools and allow you to take advantage of some of Macintosh Explorer's more powerful features.
Often it is an inconvenience to have to open an application just to see if a certain file is the one you are looking for. You may not have enough RAM or simply do not want to wait for the application to open.
Macintosh Explorer provides built in preview options to allow you to quickly preview selected files without having to open an external program. It provides a better preview then the Finder since it allows you to scale images and pictures as well as quicktime movies. You can preview any file you want using Macintosh Explorer's preview feature within each Explorer window.
To preview files in Macintosh Explorer place your mouse over the area beneath the folder list (left-most list) until you see your cursor change into a resizer. Then drag the Preview Bar upwards as big as you like. When previewing files you may find that browsing seems a little more sluggish. This is due to Macintosh Explorer loading the preview for supported files. Just drag the Preview Bar all the way to the bottom of the window to hide the preview feature and return to faster browsing.
If you need to quickly delete individual or multiple files without having to empty the trash, you can use Macintosh Explorer's permanently delete feature.
To delete any number of files simply select the files within the browser window and select 'Permanently Delete' from the Tools menu. A confirmation dialog will be displayed before the items will be deleted.
Please note that after deleting files using this method, you may not be able to recover them later using any disk recovering software.
Over time your computer may be littered with unused or unneeded files. This includes files created by applications you no longer use or files that take up no space on your hard drive. This is especially common with Preferences files as they tend to build up when downloading and testing new software.
Macintosh Explorer can remove any unused files within a specific folder for you. Simply navigate to a specific folder and select 'Find unused files' from the Tools menu. Enter the criteria that must be met to constitute as an unused file and they will be listed in a new window. From here you can choose to delete them or move them to the trash.
When transferring files over the Internet it is sometimes likely that they loose their creator information. This includes loosing their extension or creator codes especially when transferring files from other operating systems. You may also want to open all text files using a specific application or you simply want to change certain attributes for multiple files at once.
Macintosh Explorer's Batch Info Changer allows you to do just that. You can change the info for multiple files, folder, files and folders or just the selected items. You may change extended finder flags, creator codes, creation and modification dates as well as file names for numerous files at once.
[Top]For archival purposes you may wish to save lists of files within a certain folder. Macintosh Explorer allows you to save file lists in a variety of formats so that they can later be imported by any database software or simply read as text files.
Select 'Save File List' from the Tools menu. you can choose the output options which consists of additional file information that will be generated. You can also select the separator. The list will be saved as a regular text file.
If you find that you are using certain documents often or that you need access to specific folders, you can benefit from Macintosh Explorer's File Shelf which gives you quick, single-click access to your most commonly used files and folders.
Make sure the File Shelf is showing by going to Preferences and selecting the Appearance tab. From there you can select a small, medium or large shelf. You also have the option to hide the shelf entirely so that you can maximize your file navigation area.
Once you have your shelf available, you can add items to it by dragging them from Macintosh Explorer or from the Finder and dropping them within the space provided. If you Control-Click one of the files in the shelf you have a few options including viewing the file menu and revealing the file in Macintosh Explorer or the Finder. You can also remove items from your shelf in the drop down menu that appears.
You can even get a list of all enclosed folders by clicking and holding a a folder within your shelf. By selecting one of the items listed you can jump to the selected file or folder.
If you prefer a more single click navigation style resembling Mac OS X's column view or you need to quickly locate certain documents in your folders, Macintosh Explorer's Filter File List will come in handy on these situation.
The Filter File List provides a third column view which also allows you to filter which files are shown. So for example you can create a rule which would only show Word Documents or you could create a rule to only show documents created after a certain date.
To open the Filter List you can either use the View Menu or use the toolbar button in the right hand side of each Explorer window. When the Filter List is visible, yow can add new rules by selecting 'Add...' from the popup menu at the top of the window. The following options are available to you;
When the Filter File List is visible, Macintosh Explorer provides single-click navigation within the main window. This allows for faster file navigation and similar behavior to the Mac OS X column view.
If you've ever needed to pause a drag and drop operation or manipulate multiple files at once, Macintosh Explorer's file banks will come in handy. They allow a central spot where you can create a bank of files or folders that can be moved or copied all together or one at a time. This is especially useful when using the new tabbed browsing feature. You can dock certain files or folders to more easily transfer them between different folders in different tabs.
To use the file banks, select Show File Banks from the View menu. A drawer window will appear beneath the current Explorer window. You can add files or folders by dragging them from Macintosh Explorer or from the Finder and dropping them within the drawer window. The items are stacked on top of each other and can be manipulated as a whole, by dragging from the white space, or individually by dragging the top item within the smaller rectangle. You can also rearrange the file bank by control clicking within it. A contextual menu will appear which allows you to remove certain items, bring items deeper in the stack to the top or even open and get file info.