Commands Menu

The Commands menu is part of the Main window, and contains file related commands for the File Utilities page tab.

Note that for all command dialogs containing Range buttons (All or Selected options), the "Selected" setting is automatically selected if there are two or more files selected when the dialog is opened. The "Selected" setting is automatically grayed out (unavailable) if there are no items selected in the file list.

Commands | Advanced Find & Replace

Same as simple Find and Replace (View > Find & Replace Panel) but with more features.
This command opens the Advanced Find & Replace dialog.

Commands | Copy Files

Copy or backup the files in the file list (original files not deleted).
See Copy Files dialog

Commands | FTP Copy Files

Copy the files in the file list (original files not deleted) to a location on an FTP Server.
See FTP Copy Files dialog

Commands | Zip Files

Zip up all files in the file list to a PKZIP compatible zip file. When the File dialog appears enter the name of the ZIP file and press "Save". The "Zip only selected list items" check box at the bottom of the save dialog can be checked to only zip the files that are selected.

Commands | View / Unzip File

If you don't have a program like WinZip you can use this command to View and decompress ZIP files.

Commands | Set File Date & Time

Sets the file date and time of the files in the FAR file list.
This changes the file modify or create date of each file.
The "Now" button sets the Date and Time controls to the current time.
Files modified will show Matches = 1 (FAR file list).

Commands | Set File Encoding

Change a file's file type to Unicode or ANSI.
See Set File Encoding dialog

Commands | Set File Attributes

Sets the file attributes of the files in the FAR file list.
In the "Set File Attributes" dialog you can set the "Readonly, Hidden, System File and Archive" file attributes. Each check box has 3 states, check a box to set its attribute, uncheck a box to clear its attribute, and set the intermediate state to leave that attribute unchanged. If unsure test on some junk files.
Files modified will show Matches = 1 (FAR file list). File not modified (already at the requested file attribute) will show Matches = 0.

Commands | Rename Files

Rename all filenames in the FAR file list.
See Rename Files dialog

Commands | Delete Selected Files

Delete all selected files from the FAR file list, and from the hard disk.

Warning: Unlike "Edit > Remove Items" command (which removes selected files from the FAR file list) this command also deletes the selected files permanently from your hard disk.

Commands | Find Files Dated

Reports FAR list files with dates between date X and date Y.
Normally you would use the "1. File Last Modified Date", but you may need the others.
We use this option to backup the days work. The "Now" button sets the Date/Time fields to the current date/time.

Find Files Dated After:

Select this item and fill in the Date/Time fields to find all files date/time stamped after a given date/time.

Find Files Dated Before:

Select this item and fill in the Date/Time fields to find all files date/time stamped before a given date/time.

Get Date From:

Each file's has several time stamps. Pick the one(s) you want to use.

File Modify Date: When file was last modified. Explorer displays this in details view.

File Create Date: When the file was created.

FrontPage Date: Uses the FrontPage file date stamp stored in the _vti* folder.

OSI Meta Date stamp: Part of an in house version control system. Email me if for more info on this.

Search Button:

Click Search to start searching file files that fall with in the limits set above.

Any matching files are selected in the main FAR file list.
Example: Once selected you can use the Copy, ZIP, Report type commands to perform an action on these files.

Commands | Find Duplicates | ...

Use this group of commands to find duplicate items in the FAR file list. Use 1. to find items with matching file names (so different directories). This is useful when creating HH 1.x CHMs since duplicate file names cause problems with the HH TOC auto-sync feature. 2. & 3. perform a binary file comparison between files with the same File Name (2) or same File Extension (3). Performing a binary comparison during a QuickSort is very slow. Go and stretch your legs during the sorting of files. Finally all resultant matches are selected and moved to the top of the list. In the Matches column a unique number is given to each duplicate group.

1. Match Name Only:

Locate all list items with the same file name (I.E. in a different directory).
2. Match Content and Name:

Locate all list files with matching file content and file name (I.E. exactly the same file).

3. Match Content and Extension:

Locate all list files with matching file content and file extension (I.E. exactly the same file but may have a different file name).

Find Suspect Filenames: (not a duplicate command)

We needed a way to identify all filenames containing bad characters for search and compiling. At the moment the command highlights and brings to the top of the list, any filenames that do NOT contain these characters - "a".."z","A".."Z","_","-","0".."9","+". It also finds "*.H*.*" type filenames which are incorrectly identified by the HH Compiler as an HTML file to parse which often causing a crash if the file is actually a binary file (eg. fred.h100.gif).

We don't allow spaces because the space character is replaced by %20 in the HTML link which makes searching difficult. Similarly characters like "&","%","#" all tend to make searching difficult or worse break the MS HTML Help 1.x compiler.

Commands | Strip HTML Tags

Displays a dialog for stripping Html Tags from a file. Check the Tag(s) you want to strip from the files in the file list. You may add your own Tags to the list.

EG. Given the Html code "<li>Click here for help", checking the "" item will result in "<li>Click here for help".

You may notice several passes are required. One for "", "" and one for "". This is because 3 advanced find & replace defintions are created and run. Crude but effective.

Commands | Strip Spaces from Bookmarks

In HTML Help spaces not only cause problems in file names but sometimes in HTML bookmarks too. This command will replace all spaces in bookmark related tags with underscores.

Commands | Set Internet Connections dialog

Break the MS imposed restriction of a maximum limit of 2 simultaneous internet connections for a web site.
See Set Internet Connections dialog

Commands | Set Real Video Path

Before uploading Real Video or Real Audio files to the web you must set up the media path.

See Set Read Video Path Dialog.