FOLDER SIZE REPORTING

Some Microsoft Office applications will create temporary files comprised of eight alphanumeric characters without a filename extension. Typically these are cleaned up by the application automatically, but various issues (such as network connectivity interruptions or anti-virus software poking its head in) can cause such files to be orphaned.

Isolating these types of temporary files for cleanup can be tricky. But the flexible FolderSizes search facility can do it with ease. Just click the Search button in the main FolderSizes application window, and select the FileName matching tab. Enable regular expression mode and enter the following pattern:

(\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a)!.

The expression above matches exactly 8 alphanumeric characters with no extension, which is what many MS Office titles name certain temp files.

With FolderSizes, it’s also easy to find these files within a specific date range, size range, or even search by file owner.

We’re fortunate enough to get a lot of really positive feedback from the users of our software products. Today I received an email from Keith S. from Duncanville, TX. He had the following to say about FolderSizes (our disk space management software):

We’ve released a minor update to our market-leading disk space visualization software – FolderSizes – today.

Version 3.6.1.0 contains mostly minor improvements and bug fixes, and is a recommended (and entirely free) upgrade for all FolderSizes users. Simply download the latest version and install it, and the upgrade will occur automatically.

Release notes are available online here, should you wish to review them.

As always, feel free to contact us directly if you need anything.

Now that Microsoft Vista has been officially released to manufacturing (and will be available broadly to consumers at the start of 2007), I would like to summarize our product compatibility findings.

Put simply, all Key Metric Software products are fully compatible with all editions of Microsoft Vista. We’ve thoroughly tested FolderSizes, Duplicate File Detective, and OfficeStatus. We did end up making some cosmetic tweaks to the client interface of OfficeStatus (our new staff in / out board software solution) version 1.5 for the benefit of Vista, but they were quite minor.

If you do happen to stumble across any compatibility issues that we may have missed, please be sure to let us know.

Now that Windows Vista is nearing public release, I’ve been spending a bit more time running compatibility tests with FolderSizes. My findings – FolderSizes works pretty much perfectly with the most recent Vista builds.

I’m actually testing with the RC1 build of Windows Vista Ultimate Edition. Not surprisingly, the default installation of Vista Ultimate chews up a lot of disk space. Running a FolderSizes file report against my C drive reveals a significant distribution of large files.

If I switch to the File Sizes detail view in the navigation tree and double-click the 3MB-1GB file size range, FolderSizes will automatically launch a search window that shows me exactly which files exist in that size range.

Apparently the Ultimate edition of Windows Vista installs quite a bit of sample media by default. I suspect that Vista’s deeper graphical capabilities will translate into greater disk space requirements regardless of which edition you install.

I will, of course, continue testing FolderSizes compatibility with Windows Vista right up to the final release of the product. And if you’re doing the same, please feel free to contact me directly should you find anything amiss.