Ignore just 1 specific sub-folder?

[paulrus]

I'm sure this is possible, but I can't figure it out.

I'd like iMatch to scan a particular folder and all of it's subfolders except for 1 subfolder.

Is there a way to get it to exclude a single folder?

Thanks,

Paul

[Richard]

If you right click on a folder in the Media & Folders View, you will see "Remove from database" as an option.

Removing a Folder from the Database This command is available in the context menu of folders. It removes the folder, and files and all associated data from the database. This operation does not change the file system. The folder and all contained files are not deleted.
Use this command to remove a folder from IMatch you no longer want to manage, or which has been added accidentally. You can optionally choose to keep the sub-folders of the removed folder in the database-
Depending on where you remove the folder, or which state IMatch and the Windows file system are currently in, you may need to to refresh the Media & Folders tree afterwards manually. Just click in the tree to make the media & folders tree the active window and then press F5 one or more times to reload the folders from the database.

[paulrus]

I don't want to remove it.  I don't want it to be scanned when I add the parent folder to iMatch.

Specifically what I want to do is, add a folder to iMatch and have iMatch scan all sub folders except for one.

The only solution I can think of is to add all the sub-folders individually, but I thought there might be a way to flag a sub-folder prior to import.

-Paul

[ColinIM]

Hello Paul,

The Windows NTFS / Explorer 'hidden' attribute would be a temporary solution.

I can confirm from my own tests that if you apply the NTFS 'hidden' attribute to a folder then that folder (and its own sub-folders) will be unseen, and hence be skipped by IMatch when - for example - the adjacent, non-hidden folders will be happily scanned and pulled into IMatch when we add a new parent folder on a scan/rescan.

But then, if you later UN-hide that folder, it will (of course) become visible to IMatch and be 'auto-incorporated' into the database on any subsequent scan/rescan of that part of your folder tree!

For my tests, I added this "07" tree-fragment to my database:

2011       <--- 2011 was already in my database
      \07
          \03a-Keynsham Afternoon
          \03b-Keynsham Evening     <--- folder was 'hidden' for part 1 of my test.
          \04 ... (etc. etc.)

For part 1 of my test, with the test database not loaded in IMatch ...

   
• I copied the "07" folder fragment plus its sub-folders into the existing 2011 folder
• I applied the NTFS 'hidden' attribute only to the 03b-Keynsham Evening sub-folder
• then reloaded my test database into IMatch ... and
• did a right-click | Rescan now on the (so far empty) 2011 folder

When the rescan had finished, all of the new folders were present in my database except for the 03b-Keynsham Evening sub-folder.

For part 2 of my test (with the IMatch database still open), I simply removed the NTFS 'hidden' attribute from that folder, then did a right-click | Rescan now, this time on the "07" folder, and very soon that 03b-Keynsham Evening sub-folder and its images were (of course) also present in my database.

A simple test, but again, I admit, not an actual long-term solution for you.

Perhaps you could add a new Feature Request for an explicit "exclude folder" option, but I've a feeling this has already been talked about at least once here, so there may already be a Feature Request open for this, or else (unless I'm mistaken) Mario has ruled it out?

To be candid with you, I'd like to see such an option in Media & Folders too, but I can also see where a decision to "exclude this folder and exclude this folder and exclude that folder too but not these folders ..." could become messy and prone to confusion for (some) Users!  But I'd add a +1 if you raised it.

Colin P.

[photoken]

Perhaps you could add a new Feature Request for an explicit "exclude folder" option, but I've a feeling this has already been talked about at least once here, so there may already be a Feature Request open for this, or else (unless I'm mistaken) Mario has ruled it out?

To be candid with you, I'd like to see such an option in Media & Folders too, but I can also see where a decision to "exclude this folder and exclude this folder and exclude that folder too but not these folders ..." could become messy and prone to confusion for (some) Users!  But I'd add a +1 if you raised it.

I filed such a Feature Request a while ago.  There were no responses.
https://www.photools.com/community/index.php?topic=3140.msg20476#msg20476

[Mario]

If a feature request gets no comments or responses, this is usually an indicator that there is not much interest in the given feature. What may be a nice to/must have for one user in one specific situation or step of his workflow may be totally uninteresting for the majority of users.

Hiding specific folders from IMatch is exceptional and works against how the system is designed to work. If you really do you can set the hidden flag in the file system and IMatch skips the folder.

[photoken]

Hiding specific folders from IMatch is exceptional and works against how the system is designed to work. If you really do you can set the hidden flag in the file system and IMatch skips the folder.

Setting the folder as hidden in the file system is, of course, a truly awful "solution" because that folder will be hidden for everything.

I could be wrong, but I think that DigiKam allows a folder to be marked as "Do not catalog".  In other words, the view of the directory tree will have some directories marked as "The program is aware of this directory's existence and is ignoring it".

[Mario]

Of course we could add such an option to IMatch. We could add a lot of things. And we do, every build includes some new stuff. Or maybe some bigger new features. IMatch is developed using an agile model (ship updates and new features fast). Problem is to determine which things to add, or when.

Every thing added increases complexity (for me and users), requires attention during maintenance and may have many (sometimes unwanted or even surprising) side effects. Thus we always need to weight adding new options carefully, asking questions like "How many users ever will have a use for it?".

In commercial IT, "must have" feature request often become "nice to have" or an "Oh, forget it" when you attach cost (money $$$) to it.

When you tell a user coming to you with a neat feature request:

+ 10 man hours to implement it
+ 3 man hours to test it
+ 1 hours to document it
+ 0.5 hours to update the help topic
+ 0.25 * <number of languages> hours to update the user interface translations
+ 10 extra hours to add to the annual maintenance pool

users really often re-consider 

Just think about the potential impact of a "aware of a folder, but not scanning it." Does this impact functions like Delete Folder? Search? Filters? The Hierarchical Display in the file window? Scripting maybe? Why does IMatch only show 100 files when Windows Explorer shows 200? And many other things...

How to show the 'ignored' folders in the UI? Media & Folders View? File Window in hierarchical mode? Folder Filter?  Or, what if a user  loses track if he 'disabled' folders somewhere ten levels deep and now wonders why files don't show in IMatch? Surely we'll need an extension to the folder filter in the Media & Folder properties panel to display only ignored folders...

And so on and so on. Even small features often require a lot of thinking. Just saying. Not judging this feature request...

[Ger]

Ha... here's the old MoSCoW back!

In commercial IT, "must have" feature request often become "nice to have" or an "Oh, forget it" when you attach cost (money $$$) to it.

Must Have / o / Should Have / o / Could Have / o / Won't Have

Looking at some 5-6 months of IMatch 5, I see the majority of feature requests in the C and W category... kudo's to Mario for delivering a thoroughly complete new product!

Ger

[Richard]

This thread has gone off on a feature request but is not answering Paul's goal.

I don't want to remove it.  I don't want it to be scanned when I add the parent folder to iMatch.

I think that removing the folder from the database is his best way but how can he prevent that folder from being scanned before it is removed?

[paulrus]

Maybe my request isn't what everyone is thinking of, because it didn't seem like it would cause system-wide catastrophic problems.

I'm just saying, if I am importing a directory, it'd be nice to have the ability to specify directories to not import.

My specific case is - for some reason, some software packages I use still will save files to My Documents instead of My Pictures, so I want My Documents monitored in case images end up there.  However, Suitcase Fusion stores all my fonts in My Documents - and I have around 40,000 fonts.  I don't want iMatch scanning all those font files, but I do want it scanning My Documents and all sub-folders.

Not to make the comparison, but I like how Picasa handles this.  You basically have 3 settings for any folders - scan once, scan always, never scan.  That's all I was really looking for.

-Paul

[Mario]

Why don't you make the folder just hidden? Most applications ignore that, the folder will still be shown in Windows Explorer (unless you have it configured to suppress hidden folders) and IMatch will not import the folder as well.

IMatch is designed to handle folders indexed in the database recursively. I doubt that many users really index their entire "My Documents" hierarchy in IMatch - because this folder hierarchy is updated all the time, by all applications and Windows itself. This creates a massive amount of "something in a folder you  monitor" events being set to IMatch, which IMatch has to answer by rescanning the "My Documents" folder and all sub-folders. This is slow...

Can't you just add the folders you are interested in to your database, and not the entire "My Documents" hierarchy?

[photoken]

Just think about the potential impact of a "aware of a folder, but not scanning it." Does this impact functions like Delete Folder? Search? Filters? The Hierarchical Display in the file window? Scripting maybe? Why does IMatch only show 100 files when Windows Explorer shows 200? And many other things...

How to show the 'ignored' folders in the UI? Media & Folders View? File Window in hierarchical mode? Folder Filter?  Or, what if a user  loses track if he 'disabled' folders somewhere ten levels deep and now wonders why files don't show in IMatch? Surely we'll need an extension to the folder filter in the Media & Folder properties panel to display only ignored folders...

The folder would be shown in the Media & Folders view as a folder icon overlaid with the red circle and slash symbol.

If the folder has been marked as "aware of but not scanning", none of the IMatch functions would be applied to it -- not deleting, not searching, not filtering, not scripting.  Nothing.  The only option available for such a folder would be to remove the "Do not use" categorization, in which case the folder would become a "normal" folder in the database.

BTW, I just installed the latest version of DigiKam, and I was wrong about it implementing such a feature.  I have no idea where I might have seen such a thing.  It probably means that I'm spending waaaaay too much time at my computer if my fantasy life includes something like that....

[photoken]

Why don't you make the folder just hidden? Most applications ignore that, the folder will still be shown in Windows Explorer (unless you have it configured to suppress hidden folders) and IMatch will not import the folder as well.

That's exactly the point.  I do not want the folder to be hidden from other applications, only from IMatch.  I always have WinExp set to not display hidden folders, so hiding the folder in the system would prevent accessing it in WinExp as well.

[photoken]

Can't you just add the folders you are interested in to your database, and not the entire "My Documents" hierarchy?

Here's what I'm up against:

I've got a manually created "Pictures" directory (not the "My Pictures" directory) which has a subdirectory hierarchy containing all the images I add to my computer.  There are sibling subdirectories that I need to specifically set to "Ignore" because when I add images to a sibling subdirectory that I do want IMatch to automatically refresh, IMatch sees that the parent directory contains changes and will re-scan all its children, which I do not want.  If I set IMatch to not scan subdirectories, it will not automatically find the changed (or added) subdirectories that I do want re-scanned.

The request from paulrus about having 3 folder types is what I'm talking about.

[photoken]

Even small features often require a lot of thinking. Just saying. Not judging this feature request...

Understood.  Just adding my thoughts about such a feature, since it's something I've been wanting also....

[sinus]

My specific case is - for some reason, some software packages I use still will save files to My Documents instead of My Pictures, so I want My Documents monitored in case images end up there.  However, Suitcase Fusion stores all my fonts in My Documents - and I have around 40,000 fonts.
-Paul

Of course, IF IMatch would have such an option, I would have nothing against it.

But it seems, like you write, some other software packages  will save files in the wrong place. You could also place a feature request or better bug report for these programs, then IMatch would not have to correct errors from other software.

The simplest way what I would do, is create a clever folder system. I do not know, if in your case there would be a better folder-system. But like a lot of problems users have with filenames, it turns out, that these problems can be solved by creating a good filenaming system.

Do not get me wrong, maybe in your case you have a clever system, but because these mentioned software, what stores files in the wrong places, you have troubles.

If Mario has a solution for this, fine.
If not (because there is not enough support for a request or/and other requsts and bug-cleaning have the priority), then you will live with it or think about another solution for your problem.