Is this possible?

[tmpc]

Hello,

I'm new to BC and am now thinking that I made a mistake buying it. All I am really after is a simple Go / No Go indication that a file, group of files, or a folder that I copied to another hard drive are the same. So, is there a way to do the following:

1. Select a group of files (not a folder) for one side of the comparison and the same group of files elsewhere to simply verify that they are the same? Requiring a folder around them slows the whole process down.
2. Prevent a new session from being created every time I do a compare? It is a pain having to go to the program and delete these things every time I compare two things.

Thanks in advance for your help.

[smithe06]

Beyond Compare does everything you just said. It sounds like you simply don't know it well enough yet.

You don't need to have a folder to compare files, but the file systems include the folder names as part of the filenames so you can't completely get away from it. But you can compare a whole directory of files to each other, or individual files to each other.

As for sessions, you can do multiple copies and deletes etc. in the exact same session if it all takes place within the same folder structure. If you want to work on things in another folder, from the Session menu, simply select New Tab.

[Chris]

We also discussed this by email, here's a copy of my email response for anyone monitoring this thread:

If you're new to Beyond Compare, it might help to watch the Basics tutorial video on our website:
https://www.scootersoftware.com/support.php?zz=v4videos

Beyond Compare doesn't allow you to select a group of files to compare from Windows Explorer. You can either compare a pair of files or a pair of folders.

After you load a pair of folders in Beyond Compare's Folder Compare, it will automatically compare file size and modified timestamp. If you want to compare the contents of all files, click the Rules toolbar button (referee icon). In the Comparison tab, check "Compare Contents", then select "Binary comparison". If you want to compare the contents of a subset of files, you can select them in the Folder Compare, then use the "Actions > Compare Contents" command. In the Confirmation dialog, check "Show results dialog" to show a pop-up listing the comparison results. Comparison results are also displayed in the main window.

After you run a comparison, results are displayed using color. Open View > Legend to see the meaning of the comparison colors. If you run a binary content comparison, content comparison results are show as a black equal or red not equal symbol in the center column.

To only see differences, select View > Show Differences or click the red Diffs toolbar button. If no files are displayed after you click the Diffs button, it means there are no different files.

In the Home view that is displayed when you first open Beyond Compare, it will display recent comparisons on the left side under "Auto-saved". This is so you can reload past comparisons. The default settings retain the 100 most recent comparisons in the auto-saved list. If you want to reduce the number of auto saved sessions, open Tools > Options. Go to the Tweaks section. Under Metrics, set the "max auto-saved sessions" value.