Advanced File Organizer Reviewer's Guide

The main purpose of this guide is to provide product reviewers with all necessary information.

Contents:

1. What is Advanced File Organizer?
2. When is Advanced File Organizer especially effective?
3. Principal features of Advanced File Organizer.
4. Testimonials.
5. Availability and Pricing.
6. About SoftPrime Company.

1. What is Advanced File Organizer?

Advanced File Organizer is a cataloguer for your data collection which can include information on CDs, DVDs, hard drives, memory sticks and all over media recognized by Windows system. But the main purpose of this software is not only to give an opportunity to collect all information about drives, files and folders. The key point is an ability to use this information later. In other words, the main goal of a cataloging procedure is to organize the information for most effective using it later, including convenient navigation, quick and powerful search and making reports.

In general, the process of making a convenient data catalog with Advanced File Organizer can be divided into three steps. All these operations become very easy because of considered user interface of the program.

Step 1 – "Scanning". On this stage you receive the information about your file and disk catalog by scanning all necessary disks and folders from your collection.

Step 2 – "Optimizing". You can simply use your data catalog received on the previous step to search files or make some reports about your disk collection. Also you can order your data to make further using of your catalog more effective. At that you need not change the real location of your files; there are no needs to move your files and folders in more suitable place or burn new CDs or DVDs. You simply re-group the information about your files and folders in more suitable form.

Advanced File Organizer gives several ways to organize your data.

• Searchable comments: you can simply add searchable comments for your files and folders.
• Groups: you can combine disks and folders into groups based on any feature you want.
• Categories: you can sort your data by categories. All files can be referred to one or several categories, which in their turn form a hierarchical tree making your own virtual file structure. Use of categories is most powerful tool to sort your data. Advanced File Organizer has a special browsing mode "by categories" when you can navigate files and folders by their categories. So you receive "ideal" virtual file structure.

Using all or any of these instruments you have a unique chance to sort and optimize your data in various ways as it is convenient personally for you without paying any attention to the physical location of files and folders.

Step 3 – "Using the information". Using of the collected and ordered information from the catalog may include:

• convenient navigation in data collection;
• quick and powerful search of necessary data;
• making reports.

First of all using the data from the catalog consists in fast and easy search for necessary information – files and folders. For the disk collection it means most of all search on disks without needs to have them in the drive. Therefore powerful and fast search function is one of the most important features of Advanced File Organizer as cataloging software.

Other possible direction of data use is a convenient catalog browsing when you simply want to see all items with definite properties or from definite group. Advanced File Organizer has two browsing modes for the catalog – according with their location and according with assigned categories. Thus you can see at once all items (files, folders or whole disks) from the selected category even if they are located on different disks. Also every item can be assigned with several categories, in this case you will see this item in every its category. Thus you obtain complete information about files and folders from any category.

Sometimes it is necessary to get summary information about your catalog or to get full or brief list of files, folders and disks and print it. For this purpose Advanced File Organizer has a special tool - report generator where you can select type, visual style and fields to include to the report. Additional function of Advanced File Organizer is an ability to export information from the catalog to other formats, including HTML, XML, MS Excel format and Comma Separated Values format (*.csv).

It is worth to say that at any moment you can change your catalog content and structure adding new disks and folders or modifying categories. So as a result of cataloging procedure you receive your data catalog in a convenient and adaptable form.

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When is Advanced File Organizer especially effective?

Advanced File Organizer is useful for making catalog of any digital data. But there are some situations when using of Advanced File Organizer becomes especially effective:

• There are several ways to sort files and folders;
• From time to time there is a necessity to re-group your data;
• One item (file, folder or disk) relates to several groups (categories);
• Files and folders from the same group (category) are located on different disks.

In general, Advanced File Organizer is useful for a whole series of situations whether you simply have lots of files or you need to order your data in several ways. Examples of different variants of using Advanced File Organizer are considered below.

There are several ways to sort files and folders

As an example of such situation let us imagine that you want to order your collection of photos. In that case you may want to separate printed and not printed photos; to group photos by time periods (summer 2006, spring 2005, etc) and also to classify them according the picture content.

With Advanced File Organizer you have no limits on number of ordering ways. You can simply create By time, By content and Printed categories. For example, for By time category there are subcategories Summer 2006, Spring 2005, etc., similarly you define subcategories for By content and Printed categories. After that you assign photos with corresponding subcategories from By time, By content and Printed. As a result, you have the catalog sorted in several ways.

Thus Advanced File Organizer gives you a freedom to choose the number and principles of ordering your digital collection. And what is more Advanced File Organizer has a special visual tool for ordering files and folders by using Drag&Drop. And you can order your data collection in a minimum of time and effort just dragging a certain item (file or folder) and dropping it wherever you need in categories.

From time to time there is a necessity to re-group your data.

At the beginning of your data collection it is very difficult to define the optimal groups (categories) for a convenient ordering files and folders. For example, if you have a few utilities in the disk collection, it is enough to set one category for all of them. But if in the future the category Utilities will enlarge, it will be necessary to divide it into number of subcategories. Also sometimes you need to make an absolutely new classification. For your software collection it can be, for example, ordering according the operational system (new categories may be Vista compatible and Vista incompatible).

In such situations you can easily re-order information about files and folders not changing their physical location. Data catalog created with Advanced File Organizer is adaptable to your changing requirements.

One item (file, folder or disk) relates to several groups (categories).

Let us assume that you have documentations for several models of, for example, kitchen ranges or automatic telephone systems. And some documents are applicable to several models. In this case you, of course, do not want to make several copies of the same files, because it means to spend disk space and to have a mess in your data (what if you will need to change these files and you will forget about copies?). It is very easy to solve this problem with Advanced File Organizer. You make corresponding categories for every model (for our example kitchen range model 1, kitchen range model 2, etc) and assign documents with one or several categories, according the models, for which these documents are actual.

In the same way you can sort you film collection defining categories according the genre or film director. Ability to set several categories can be very useful when film relates to some genres or there are several film directors.

Files and folders from the same group (category) are located on different disks.

This situation takes place if you have many CDs or DVDs with the similar content, for example with software or music. In this case every disk maybe has the ideal structure, all files are in the right places, but navigation and search in the whole collection become extremely difficult. To find file you need to insert every disks into drive and search on it. Besides if several disks contain, for example, utilities, you have no chance to see all utilities from your collection together. There is one more possible problem in this case. The ordering way on different disks can be a little or strongly different.

Advanced File Organizer helps you to obtain complete information about all disks in your collection. You choose categories for the collection on the whole and make your own catalog where you can quickly find all required files and browse all files and folders from your data collection.

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Principal features of Advanced File Organizer.

The following list of Advanced File Organizer's features may give you a certain insight of what benefits a user can expect from the program:

• A range of instrument for sorting data. You can simply add searchable comments for your files and folders; you can combine disks and folders into groups based on any feature you want; at last you can sort your data by categories. Using all or any of these instruments you have a unique chance to sort and optimize your data in various ways as it is convenient personally for you without paying any attention to the physical location of files and folders.
• Hierarchic categories. Using of categories is a most powerful tool to sort your data. Categories are your own way to sort your catalog; they do not change the real location of files. In other word, by defining Categories you select a way to represent information about your file and disk catalog in more convenient form; you create your "ideal" file structure (hierarchy of Categories).
• Visual Sorting Mode. Advanced File Organizer has the Visual Category Assistant function, which adds special zest to the program – now sorting of your data collection requires a minimum of time and effort. You just drag a certain item (file or folder) and drop it wherever you need in categories.
• Several Categories for one item. Every item in the catalog (it can be file, folder or disk) can be assigned with several categories. Browsing the content of your catalog by categories you will see an item in every its category. Using this feature you can sort your data in several ways simultaneously. You can make category tree where every subcategory from the top level corresponds to definite sorting way.
• Convenient browsing. Advanced File Organizer has two browsing modes for files and folder – according with their location and according with structure of categories you defined.
• Powerful search function. Advanced File Organizer has a comprehensive search function with different criterions including search in your comments, archive files and selected categories.
• Compact database. Advanced File Organizer doesn't use any database engines. The database generated by Advanced File Organizer is very compact and will be fully compatible with future versions.
• Archived files support. The program supports RAR, ZIP and ACE Archives. It is possible to browse the content of archived files, search inside archives and extract archive descriptions.
• Work with ISO and Nero CD/DVD images. Advanced File Organizer extracts information from ISO and Nero CD/DVD images and imports it to catalog as a folder.
• Export information to other formats. There is a special tool in Advanced File Organizer to export information from the catalog to other formats, including HTML, XML, MS Excel format and Comma Separated Values format (*.csv).

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Testimonials.

"Advanced File Organizer has helped me to turn an old time nightmare, into a walk in the park. Now all I have to do, is to do a quick search and find exactly the file I need, no matter where they are."

"Advanced File Organizer scanned my CD in seconds not minutes and displayed the CD contents immediately! Missing file is now on hand in seconds. Time is money and this program is a money saver."

"Advanced File Organizer helps me search through thousands of project files in a fraction of a second. The primary benefits of using Advanced File Organizer over other products are: reliability, speed and scalability."

"I teach multimedia programming at the Faculty of Design and Arts of the University of Architecture of Venice, Italy.
As you can imagine we have a big problem trying to catalogue files and with the back-ups. Each student, during the course has to develop a web site or a multimedia product on a CD-Rom/DVD conserving every single files and every significant passage of transformation. All this generates a huge amount of data that usually we archive on DVD. Less than a week ago we started to try Advanced File Organizer and we are sure that we found the solution to all our problems."

"My catalog contains 861,632 files in 25,551 folders. This totals 147.78 GB. In running two searches just before I wrote you this letter, I tested it with a sample word "mission." Searching through all those files, Advanced File Organizer took less than 2 seconds
Cataloging an entire hard disk of, let's say, 50 GB only takes a few minutes to accomplish. It is a very impressive result and is far faster than any other program I know in accomplishing such a feat. Obviously cataloging of CDs and other removable media is extremely easy to do and allows the user a lot of flexibility. There are many other excellent features in the program that should prove very useful to users of the program. I can recommend it without hesitation."

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Availability and Pricing.

Advanced File Organizer runs under Windows 95/98/ME/NT 4/2000/XP/Vista and costs $29.95 (USD) or €24.95 (Euro) for a single-user license. Volume discounts are available. Detailed information about prices and ordering are at http://www.softprime.com/purchase.htm.

The 30-days trial version of Advanced File Organizer is available at http://www.softprime.com/download/aforg.exe.

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About SoftPrime.

The company was founded in 2000. Now its specialists work on various methods of data structuring and optimization. First of all, innovative solutions and services of SoftPrime Company affect the software usability and human-to-computer interaction studies. All additional information about the company and its product is available at http://www.softprime.com.

Contact information

Pacific Business Centre
Att: SoftPrime
#101 - 1001 W. Broadway
Suite 381
Vancouver, BC V6H 4E4
Canada

Technical Support: support@softprime.com
Sales department: sales@softprime.com

Please contact us at support@softprime.com if you have some questions concerning our software or if you need some additional information. We are always ready to answer all your questions.

Product page link: http://www.softprime.com
Direct Download link: http://www.softprime.com/download/aforg.exe
E-mail: support@softprime.com
Company web-site: http://www.softprime.com