Search Location - where to look.

First we need to tell the program where to search. On the 'Search Criteria' tab you can choose folders by selecting from the list and dragging to the 'Search Paths' windows, or by clicking the Add Path button. Alternately paths can be dragged and dropped from Windows Explorer.  Right clicking on a path names brings up extra options.  Specific paths can be excluded from the search.

The program will also search all subfolders contained within the folders in the list as well. If you don't want this to happen, untick the 'Scan Subfolders' menu option in the 'Options' dropdown.

File Filters

You can choose from one of the preset filters (graphics file, office files,movies, etc) by clicking on the 'Select' button,  or you can type in your own. Multiple filters are separated by a semicolon (;).  You can create custom lists of file extensions to save for later use.

You can also choose to exclude certain file extensions should you wish.

File Sizes

You can set the file size range of the search (Minimum and Maximum). This is expressed in Kilobytes (KB).

File Dates

This allows you to search between certain file dates (Created or Modified).

Find Files With

You may specify to search for duplicates by any combination of:

• Same Content
• Same File Name
• Same Size
• Same Modified Date
• Same Created Date
• Same Artist
• Same Title
• Same Album

Same Content is the default option. When this option is ticked files will be classed as duplicates if they have identical content. This means they could have a different date, file name, etc.

The Audio tags criteria (Same Artist, Title, Album) will only be available when 'Read Audio tags' is checked in the options drop-down menu. This special mode will read the extra information contained within the file - Song title, Artist, Length, Bit Rate, etc. The currently supported formats are MP3, M4A, M4P, WMA,OGG,APE and FLAC. This information can then be used as an additional tool when deciding which files to delete.

Some Examples:

I want to find duplicates that are exactly the same

• Select 'Same Content' only

I want to find different versions of the same named document

• Select 'Same name' only

I want to find if I have multiple copies of MP3 files

• Try a search with 'Same Artist' and 'Same Title' only checked. You should also do a separate 'Same Content' file search as well, to catch any duplicate files with missing tags.

Further Search Options:

These are accessed from the drop-down 'Options' menu:

• Scan Subfolders
  Search all the subfolders of your selected folders
• Don't Scan System Files/Folders
  All folders and files marked as 'System' in Windows will be ignored for your protection
• Don't follow NTFS Mountpoints and Junctions
  Prevents Duplicate Cleaner from following 'virtual' folders in Windows which could lead to complications, including the same folder being scanned twice under different path names and the contents being presented as duplicates.
• Count Hardlinks in File
  This will list a hardlink count for each file in the results (NTFS only)
• Exclude Hard Linked Files from the Duplicate List
  Use this to exclude hard links from the results (Requires 'Count hardlinks' option to be turned on).
• Fuzzy Text Matching (Experimental)
  Applies fuzzy matching logic to text searches (eg. Filename comparison, audio tag comparison).
• Read Music Tags
  Duplicate Cleaner will read the embedded tags in audio files and present these in the results
• Read Image Tags
  Duplicate Cleaner will extract the image dimensions and present these in the results list.