Comparing files in 2 different folders [with sub-folders and different structure]

[birdy]

Hello,

I am trying to compare two folders containing jpg images. Each folder has subfolders and all the subfolders contain images. But the subfolder names and structure are different between folder A and B. Both folders have images in common (duplicates), and images that are unique. I am trying to find all duplicate images and remove them from left side but when I use beyond compare duplicates are not shown beside each other. (left and right side). I have few purple folders, few black ones and a transparent part. anyway can someone please explain how can I achieve a search to find all duplicates and uniques from these folders.

Thanks in advance

[Aaron]

Hello,

Most folder view modes will treat folder structure as important, so files need to be in the same named folders and have the same names in order to align and be compared.

We do have one mode in the View menu -> Ignore Folder Structure, which takes the entire left side and places it in a single bucket, removing the folders/subfolder alignment. However, this mode expects that all files within any folder on the Left (or right) side are uniquely named. The name is still important for the alignment, and if duplicate names exist on one side, the other side has to pick one *before* the comparison scan. This can be manually overridden with Align With, but it is not a good method to find duplicates if the same file name exists multiple times.

BC4 does not have a dedicated duplicate file finder. It's something that's been on our wishlist, but is outside the scope of our current Session types.

[birdy]

Thanks a lot for your reply Aaron,

To be honest I underestimated this software and was expecting something much more simple when I tried to use it. A study of the help documents is a must to be able to understand and use this software correctly as it's pretty powerful software. Ignoring Folder Structure did the trick for me and I was able to get the job done. The dedicated duplicate file finder would certainly be a nice feature as my next question was if I could search for duplicate files (with same or different names) in the one folder (with sub-folders). According to your reply the answer is no for the moment but probably yes in the future

[Aaron]

It's not currently scheduled development, but we've gotten requests over the years, so it's a feature on our radar.

We have a video series that would probably be useful for you to give you an overview of the program, general workflows, etc, here:
http://www.scootersoftware.com/features.php?zz=v4videos
(Some of the BC3 videos cover additional topics, and are largely applicable to BC4 as well).