This is a short tutorial that suggests a way to organize a very large amount of files with DropIt (like files on a old hard disk).
The simple idea is to separate this procedure into two steps, doing a first pre-sorting operation to make a macro selection by format.
Step 1:
This step is the core of the idea: before create all the associations needed to organize your files, start creating a single association that performs a first separation of your files.
If you are new with DropIt, you could need to read How to Start with DropIt and How to Create your First Association before proceed.
The suggested single association, following reported, allows to separate your files in folders by format:
Now drag&drop your files onto DropIt to process and separate them.
Step 2:
Your files are separated into folders like “jpg”, “txt”, “doc”… You can disable the first step association now and use all the desired actions on your files, with the advantage of process them one format per time and maybe ignore undesired formats.
DropIt Blog 
How would you go about sorting and moving files into subfolder.
Like this example:
anastasia-0000001.jpg
anastasia-0000002.jpg
…
anastasia-00000101.jpg
anastasia-00000102.jpg
…
anastasia01.jpg
anastasia02.jpg
…
camila01.jpg
camila02.jpg
…
claudia-0004501.jpg
claudia-0004502.jpg
…
into subfolders like
anastasia-00000/anastasia-0000001.jpg
anastasia-00000/anastasia-0000002.jpg
anastasia/anastasia01.jpg
anastasia/anastasia02.jpg
camila/camila01.jpg
camila/camila02.jpg
claudia-00045/claudia-0004501.jpg
claudia-00045/claudia-0004502.jpg
You could try to use abbreviation modifiers to do it, using something like this destination folder: %FileName#c<2%
Is it possible with dropit to automatically change the name of a series of files, for example, deleting part of the name or inserting text?
Yes, it is possible with Rename action and using abbreviation modifiers you have additional features to configure the new filename. I recommend you to read the included pdf Guide (in particular the part about Modifiers at the end), available also here: http://dropit.sourceforge.net/assets/guides/GuideEN.pdf
Ok, i don’t understand very well how is it done.
For example, all my files start with string “city” (for example, “city – foto 1.jpg”; “city – foto2.jpg”), and i want to delete “city – “. How do i write the association?
Is it: %%#d(city – )%FileName%.%FileExt%?
I’m sorry, thank your response.
I got it!
%FileName#d(city – )%.%FileExt%
correct?
Yes, this solution may works as you need. The best solution is to copy a couple of your files and test it on them.
How would I insert a double dash in a filename, as follows:
FROM: “word1 word2.jpg”
TO: “word1 — word2.jpg”
Thanks!
If “word2” is a defined word, you could use this solution:
%FileName#r( word2,— word2)%.%FileExt%
Otherwise a possible solution is to replace the white space:
%FileName#r( , — )%.%FileExt%
Thanks. What programming language is this, by the way? AutoHotkey?
It is AutoIt.
I’ve tried to figure this out with no luck, so I’ll ask here:
Suppose i have a bunch of files named 001-001.txt, 001-004.txt, 003-045.txt. etc. and I’d like to move this files to folders having the same name (almost).
Folder examples could be
“Something Something (001-004)”
“Something (001-001)”
“Something Something Something (003-045)”
Is there a way to make the files end up in the right folders? I haven’t seen any regexp methods in dropit that I can use in the destination path.
To customize your destination folders you can use abbreviations (read the Guide.pdf for more info). I’m not sure of what “Something” represents in your destinations, but you could create some associations with destination folders like these:
“Something Something (%FileName%)”
“Something (%FileName%)”
“Something Something Something (%FileName%)”
Hello,
I was using the String Modifiers to rename my files until I found a problem…
No matter what I tried I couldn’t use the #s-(s1,s2) nor the #s–(s1,s2) modifiers.
Is there a problem with what I did?
For example,
File: “1234567890.txt”
Action: Rename
New Name: %FileName#s-(2,8)%.%FileExt%
The end result would always be “.txt” no matter what I used for s1 & s2.
I also tried enclosing s1 & s2 with quotation marks but to no avail…
Also, is there a way to remove a string from s1 & s2 as opposed to what #s-(s1,s2) does?
Like, I want to remove the words enclosed in brackets as in “(Apple Banana) Orange.txt”
Thanks so much in advance! 🙂
Thanks for your report, I’ll try to fix the issue in next release and I’ll consider to add your feature request.
Can you verify if the bug is fixed in the following linked beta version?
http://www.lupopensuite.com/files/dropit/DropIt_v5.1_Portable.zip
Yes!! The v5.1beta worked perfectly fine!
Haven’t encountered any error as of yet.
Thank you so much!! 😀
Hello Lupo!
Once again thank you so much for the beta v5.1 it helped me lots! ^ ^
I just updated to the new v5.2 today but realised I got the bug again…
Its the same error with the #s-(s1,s2) and #s–(s1,s2) modifiers.
Would be grateful if you would look into this for me again!
Thanks in advance! :>
I’ll do more tests soon.
is it possible to run a series of action in a folder in a predefined sequence? For examples, I monitor X folder & want 1. all zip files be extracted in Y folder 2. Delete all zip files in X folder.
Currently it is not possible, but I planned to add an option for Compress/Extract actions to “Remove source after processing it”.
thanks! it would be great 🙂
Has that been added by any chance?
Yes, you can perform “Remove source after processing it” also with Compress and Extract actions.
DVR2-P-cam01-20130525-150000.h264
DVR2-P-cam02-20130525-150000.h264
DVR2-P-cam01-20130525-153000.h264
DVR2-P-cam02-20130525-153000.h264
DVR2-P-cam01-20130526-150000.h264
DVR2-P-cam02-20130526-150000.h264
DVR2-P-cam01-20130526-153000.h264
DVR2-P-cam02-20130526-153000.h264
how to sort them in-
-folder “cam01 ; cam02”
–subfolder “yyyymmdd”
You can use modifiers to do it. You can find info about them at the end of the PDF guide.
This is an example that may works for you:
C:\Destination\%FileName#>8,5%\%FileName#>14,8%
thank you very much Lupo73~
treat u a coffee later~
Could you actually sort files … such as softwares into categories such as:
the files being dropped comes from folders:
– Audio-Video Communication over IP
– Communic.ate
– Communication – Webcams
– Internet – Chat and Voice
– Internet – Voice Over IP
to a final folder such as > Software/Internet – Chat, Voice and Video communication/
???
and then could you also have the year so that the target folder would be:
> 2013/Software/Internet – Chat, Voice and Video communication/
Can DropIt analyse the path of the incomming file?
Could you scan an entire folder structure and defrag the folder into categorised folders?
This seems to be a promising utility.
Yes, it is one of the main features of DropIt.
You can define rules to filter files by part of their name, by extension, by their path. You can also define additional filters by size, by date and others. DropIt will scan your folders and process files filtered by these rules.
Then you can define a destination using abbreviations, as described in some tutorials of this blog, to categorize your files in desired destination paths.
I recommend you to read the other tutorials and the included pdf guide.
So, I use dropit to move images from camera/shared folder. What I want is to copy up to skydrive based on date taken AND move the same files to my file server. How do I accomplish this. I can make a separate association to copy, and it works, but with a second association for move, dropit always asks what I want to do. I suppose I would have to do it in two steps, but it would be nice if dropit supported multiple commands for each association.
Currently multiple actions are not supported, you need to do it in two steps.
Thanks for this great product! I recently had to recover data off a formatted hard drive. The process left me with 3000 folders with 500 files in each folder. I needed to sort these files by extension to make it easier to find things (recovering data destroys file names and folders), Dropit was great but I found dropping multiple folders was very slow. For example I dropped 100 folders (ie 50 000 files) and it took 2 days to process. In the end I ended up using the command line options to call Dropit with each folder as a parameter and this sped up the process significantly. I think I did 2000 folders (is 1 million files) in under a day!
Does it required a lot of time to load files or to process them? Because it is possible that the loading step required a long time for lots of files, because DropIt needs to optimize the list of files at the beginning, while the processing itself may be independent from that number. Happy to know that it finally helped you.
Good Morning, this is a very nice product, I have a big catalog of photo to sort automatically, I find out that exif data don’t work with .NEF and .TIF or .TIFF files. Just sort on unknow data. Let me know if there is a tip to solve out this problem.
For other format same as .jpg all work perfectly.
Thank you for your help.
Cristian
It may works with TIFF files, I’ll contact you by mail to ask you to send me a file example.
Hi,
Love the application. Wondering if someone can answer a quick query. I want to set up a process to moving files of a certain type and then deleting both the files and folders that remain?
Despite lots of fiddling I cannot get dropit to delete the empty folders afterwards – only the files. I have tried using tick box for ‘Scan sub folders and not process them etc” I have also tried creating a delete association of ‘##’ whilst having the move association starred.
Is there any way to achieve my objective of
Thanks
Try to follow this tutorial and let me know:
http://www.dropitproject.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=howto:remove_empty_folders
Love this program. Need some help in how to sort a file such as “DoeJohn21350 14-07-21” into a preexisting folder named “DoeJohn21350”. How do I get the program to look at only the first string of characters or word which is the DoeJohn21350 and not the 14-07-21 and match it up to the folder DoeJohn21350? What would be the expression I would use? Thank you so much for your help! RR
I think you will find there tutorials useful:
http://www.dropitproject.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=howto:customize_destinations
http://www.dropitproject.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=howto:customize_abbreviations
I was able to organize the files by using the following Destination path: U:\BCC\%FileName#>1,1%\%FileName#c<14%\ However, a folder will be made if one does not exist for a file. Is there a way to make the program not make a new folder for a file that does not match up to an existing folder and kick all such files to a set folder or destination? Thank you for your help.
Currently it is not possible, because one of the core features of DropIt is to move files in structured folders, but I’ll consider it for the future.
Awesome! Its in fact awesome article, I have got much clear idea on the topic of from
this post.
How do I replicate an IF THEN situation with dropit. If the file has a certain keyword, I would like to use a certain association and if is has this other keyword, then another association.
Also, if a folder doesnt exist, I would not want to create one. Is there a way to do this now ?
As answered on Facebook, you can have a look at the official wiki: http://www.dropitproject.com/dokuwiki/doku.php
About folder creation, it is not possible to avoid it.
How do I replicate an IF THEN situation with dropit. If the file has a certain keyword, I would like to use a certain association and if is has this other keyword, then another association.
And now can we choose if we want to copy files if the destination folder does not exist ?
Thanks !
I want to automatically monitor a folder in a network location (ie. \\\) that is getting files added to it throughout the day. I want to copy those files to a folder on my local machine (C:\\). The first time I do this, I am copying every existing file (5,500+ files) in the network location to the local location. However, the next time it runs, I only want it to copy over the new files that is hasn’t already copied previously. What I’ve noticed is DropIt loads all 5,500+ files again, which takes forever, before only copying the new files with a ‘Date modified’ of less than 1 hour. There may only be about 10 new files to copy. How can I get it only load and copy the new files? I guess it needs to look at the date of the every file to know if it is less than 1 hour old. Any suggestions/comments?
You can use Additional Filters in your associations to process only files with a “Date modified” of less than 1 hour. You could also check “Ignore unassociated files/folders” from Options to automatically skip undesired files.
Hi Lupo,
wonder if you could advise, I have a couple of associations defined, but only 1 seems to be working, and for some files it works fine, for others, not so…
Rule1:
S\d\dE\d\d-.*.ts
Rename
New name: %FileName#s–(-,.)#s<-(-)#r(_,
)%\%FileName#s–(-,.)#s1,6% –
Title.%FileExt%
Rule2:
(E\d\d-).*.ts
rename
%FileName#s–(-,.)#s<-(-)#r(_, )%\%FileName#s–(-,.)#s1,3% – Title.%FileExt%
I have 2 files that I’m testing this with:
E01-Victoria1-2200_20160828-33-10710000-1472418000.ts
rule 2 being used =>Victoria1\Victoria1 – S99E01 – Title.ts
S01E01-Victoria-2200_20160828-33-10710000-1472418000.ts
=> Victoria\Victoria – S99S01 – Title.ts
rule 2 being used.
Any suggestions as to why the second file is not being processed by rule 1?
Thanks
Tony
hi there
I’m trying to create an association so that files in a folder are moved to a sub folder.
for example:
Folder1
->file1
->file2
->file3
->Subfolder
–>file4
–>file5
but when I use an association that I think is stating “all files, but not folder “Subfolder” I get DropIt trying to move the entire folder to a new folder, in the same directory as the main folder (eg it tries to move Folder1 to Subfolder1/Folder1).
What I am trying to achieve is to move all files in Folder1 to Subfolder1.
I need to tell DropIt not to process those already in Subfolder1.
What am I doing wrong?
I’ve tried
*;**/Subfolder1
this has the effect mentioned above.
thanks in advance
(great program btw!).
Heyya, I’m trying to move all files that go to my desktop to a folder in my User dir. Right now DropIt moves all the files but completely ignores file structure. Is there any way to keep file structure and move whole folders instead of individual files?