FlexTK Express from Flexsense is a good example of a GUI tool that allows you to perform tasks that can be done only on the command prompt by operating system means. Its file management capabilities are so sophisticated that only an absolute PowerShell geek would be able to reproduce them with scripts. However, to work with FlexTK Express you don’t have to write one line of code and you can get the job done without consulting a manual. You just have to launch the tool to automate all kinds of file management operations. This is how system administration should always be.
- Poll: How reliable are ChatGPT and Bing Chat? - Tue, May 23 2023
- Pip install Boto3 - Thu, Mar 24 2022
- Install Boto3 (AWS SDK for Python) in Visual Studio Code (VS Code) on Windows - Wed, Feb 23 2022
FlexTk Express has three main functions: Search, Orgranize and Sync.
“Search” allows you to define complex Search Commands which you can save for later use. Each Search Command may contain multiple Search Criteria such as the search for files containing a certain text, file attributes, last modified, etc. You can also limit your search using categories. There are 12 pre-defined a categories. Examples for categories are images, Internet files, programs and script files, hidden movies and pictures and many more. It is possible to add additional classifications via plugins which you can download from the Flexsense web site. After you defined a Search Command you can apply it to any folder and its subfolders. The most useful part of the search function is that you can copy, move or delete all files that were found. A typical example of use would be to delete all tmp files on a certain drive that are older than 3 months.
“Organize” works similarly like Search. The main difference is that you can combine a search command with a certain action, i.e. move, delete and copy. This allows you to perform a certain task with just one step after you have defined an Organize operation. The Advanced Options enables you to specify what FlexTK is supposed to do if a file already exists. It is also possible to forward the search results to an external program. In Powershell, you would use a pipe for this. It is quite useful that FlexTK offers a Preview function here. This way you can exclude certain files before you actually perform the organize function.
The logic behind “Sync” is analogous, just that you specify search criteria for the synchronization operation. However, you can also synchronize a source directory with destination directory without configuring search criteria. FlexTK supports all common synchronization modes such as two-way file synchronization or two-way accumulation and update. The Advanced Options allows you to configure how many streams will be used and you can exclude directories from the sync process.
FlexTK Express has additional features. “Analyze” gives you an overview of the storage utilization (see screenshot), “Duplicates” shows how many duplicate files are on your system and how much space you wasted this way, and “Clean Up” allows you to get rid of “useless files” such as temporary files, Internet cache or Internet history.
The only feature I missed is the ability to work with regular expressions. However, the capabilities of the search functions are quite sophisticated and more convenient to use. Note that I didn’t discuss all features of FlexTK Express in this post. If you often have to perform complex file operations, you definitely should check out this nifty tool. FlexTK Express is free, but there are also two commercial editions, FlexTK Professional and FlexTK Ultimate. This comparison table has more information.
This tool is fantastic! I tried it out today and I like it, it’s very quick!
Try Ashisoft Duplicate Finder to find and remove duplicate files. http://www.ashisoft.com
I use this free tool to Find Similar Files
Give it a try…it provides impressively good results.