Need an exclusion option for indexing sub-folders

[Lincon]

Hello everyone,,
Win7 x64 SP1
IM5 5.1.12

The new behavior of adding sub-folders that are new or changed when IM5 starts is good for my camera directory, but is too general and needs to have an exclusion list of folders to not check for new items.

Here's the problem:holiday postcards printing and mailing
My \Pics directory has a few dozen sub-directories, and I do not want all of those sub-directories indexed by IM5.  Everything works well until one of those sub-directories that is intentionally not included in IM5 gets some new images dumped into it.  When IM5 is started, it begins to index the 19,000 images in that "junk" sub-directory and the only way I can stop that indexing is to remove the sub-directory from the file panel while IM5 is still trying to index it.

If the Preferences had a box to list the fully-qualified path of sub-folders to not index, it would be great.

As it is, all I can do now is to disable the "Include sub-folders" option, which kind of defeats the whole purpose of the new method of indexing.

[Jingo]

this is not a bad idea... but I'm not sure why you would want to include "junk" folders under your master photo library directory?  I intentionally only keep photos that I want indexed by IM under a unique master directory... anything that is temp/junk/extra I just used other drives/folders for... 

[thrinn]

Lincon,
if your version is really 5.1.12: This is an quite old release. So some of the options that are available in IM 2019 are maybe not available in you version.

[Mario]

Lincon,
if your version is really 5.1.12: This is an quite old release. So some of the options that are available in IM 2019 are maybe not available in you version.

Ah. I missed that. No support from me is available from me for legacy versions of IMatch: 3, 5, 2017, 2018.
It makes no sense to request features for legacy products.

IMatch 2019 has a feature to exclude folders: Indexing

[JLGF1]

Your IMatch is out of date (non-supported).
Your OS will soon be out of date (non-supported).

Might be time to upgrade...

[lucio]

Hi,
I run iMatch 2019 (TryOut) on Windows 10. I've tried to exclude some folders as explained by Mario with the argument x:\archive\exported;x:\archive\temp;....etc. but nothing happens, the excluded folders keep appearing in the folder list along with the contained files shown inn the thumbnails panel.
What am I doing wrong?

Regards.

[JohnZeman]

Welcome to IMatch lucio.

To excludes folders you need to enter the folder names as a regular expression and in regular expressions certain characters need to be escaped.  The \ is one of those characters and it is also the character you use to escape special characters.

Try changing these names

X:\archive\exported
X:\archive\temp

To these

X:\\archive\\exported
X:\\archive\\temp

[Mario]

If you want to exclude sub-folders via Edit > Preferences > Indexing, you cannot exclude absolute (fully-qualified folders).
As explained in the help (press <F1> when the preferences dialog is open):

This option allows you to specify one or more regular expressions (separated with a semicolon). Folders matching one of the expressions are not included in the database. This feature can be very helpful if you use software which creates sub-folders you don't want to include in yoru DAM.

The \ has a special meaning in regular expressions and hence you have to double it \\ if you mean a 'real' \
See also the examples given in the help, which use \\

More on Regular Expressions in IMatch.
The Regular Expression Tester app (in the App Manager panel) allows you to try out regular expressions easily.

[JLGF1]

I know that reg exps are often the most flexible and always the most powerful.  But, maybe in the future there could also be a point-click exclude method in the file tree?  Escaping the special chars often trips people up eg the slashes in path names.

Example: (the red circle next to the folder icon)

[Mario]

No.

IMatch, like all DAM applications, is designed to manage all folders, including sub-folders, you include in your database.
There are so many implications, from versioning to metadata propagation to moving or copying parent folders which depend on that principle.

The option to exclude folders was mostly added to help the users of Capture One - because Capture One insists on creating sub-folders with settings in every folder 'touched' by that software.

If you don't use C1 and you consider to excluding folders - don't. Move folders you don't want to manage in your DAM outside the folder hierarchies you manage in IMatch.
Otherwise you can shoot yourself in your own foot badly - or in a year or two we'll have to research strange 'effects' caused by files in folders you have excluded.

If you have, guessing from your screen shot, other software which works better for you - use it, by all means.
IMatch works great for many people. It may not be the best software for you specific workflow or requirements.

[Jingo]

Just for info.... C1 only uses subfolders within a photo directory if you use their Session option... if you use the catalog option, then no subfolders are created and things work well!

[JLGF1]

IMatch 2019 has a feature to exclude folders: Indexing

Ok, got it. Since there was already an option to exclude folders I thought perhaps it should be easier to use, but I see I was mistaken. It's not hard to move unwanted folders out of the dir hierarchy so that is an easy work-around.