Need to add Management Tools for lists of found files/problems

pdalton

I've used JV16 Power Tools for a very long time (decades?), and have had a Lifetime license for almost as long. Still, I don't use it frequently nor have I been using as many of its different features as many others have. However, I've recently been exploring it more and have run into difficulties that seem like they shouldn't exist in a product that's been around so long.

I do admit the possibility that some or all of these difficulties may be due to my own ignorance, but - even if that's true - it still shouldn't be as difficult as I've been experiencing and better onscreen "hints" should be used.

The overall issue I'm running into pertains to the modules intended to find, identify, and present a list of "problems" or of groups of files (e.g., System Cleaner, Duplicate File Finder, Big File Finder). In these, I cannot find any of the relatively simple types of data management/reporting features that would make the data output from each of these modules nearly as useful as I would have expected, particularly as those capabilities are so frequently available in other products that generate such "lists".

Specifically, when the resultant list of these modules' work is displayed, the only "easy to execute" capability that is apparent and seemingly available is "delete all". Beyond that, dealing with these lists of results seems problematic.

1. For example, just trying to delete some, but not all, of the rows from these lists seems much more difficult that it ought to be, principally because there seems to be no facility that permits a user to select a group (or groups) of rows to be "checked" or "unchecked" all at once (such as "Click" on a row, then "Shift-Click" or a different row farther down in the list to mark/unmark all of those rows at once). Instead, I've found that each row must be "unchecked" (or "checked") one at a time - this seems silly. On the other hand, if it already IS possible to select & mark groups of rows as I've described, please include a note on the screen about the method for doing that. If that capability is not now possible, however , please add this capability -- it shouldn't be difficult to do.

2. I saw that those list displays DO permit sorting the list by the columns. However, when looking at a list of files, one of the most useful of those columns should be "File Type", but there all of the entries on every row is just the word "File" and the actual "file type" is not shown on the list at all. That pretty well makes that column totally useless. I hope this is just a "bug" and can be fixed quickly.

If not, it's an oversight that needs to be fixed ASAP.

3. Potentially the most useful of the seemingly "missing" data management/reporting tools is any ability to save and/or export these lists for more thorough and/or later analysis before making decisions. It seems that, when one of these modules is run, if you don't "deal" with its listed results right then, or if you try to use a different module before dealing with that first module's list, then that first module's list disappears and the user must start over and generate an entirely new list, even just a few seconds later. I cannot imagine it wouldn't be useful to many to be able to "save" the most recent of such lists to be able to return and work on them later. Even more importantly, users should be able to export these lists (preferably as .csv files) so the information can more easily be manipulated and analyzed in an external product (e.g., Excel, Word, etc.). The absence of this capability is terribly frustrating when trying to deal with a list of thousands of "Duplicate Files". As you well know, software executables often are accompanied by necessary file(s) identical to a file that shipped with different software programs, but each of those programs "looks" for that file in a different location. So deleting some of those duplicates can cause real problems, so caution -- and time -- is required. And particularly when the list of such duplicates is quite long (hundreds or thousands), few users can or have the time to tackle what to do about all of those duplicates at once; instead, most users would likely prefer the ability to divide up that sort of "cleanup" chore into batches to be performed later at different times.

4. Finally, even the program's design that presents these lists as white text on a black background presents problems. After not finding the tools I've described above, I tried something I've done successfully many other times: Take a screenshot of each page, then save it as a .jpg image file; then use Acrobat Pro to create a single pdf file of all of those images (in my case, 10 pages) and make sure it's created as searchable text so it will OCR the text on those images. Finally, export that pdf file as an Excel file. But, this time, even THAT didn't work (the product was a real mess). I've done this successfully many times in the past, but admittedly those were created from images of black text on a white background. That makes me suspect JV16Tools' decision to present these lists in this "inverted view" is causing this difficulty.

I believe all of the above should be fairly easy issues to remedy/ Doing so would make the product much more useful, so I hope you'll consider addressing these at your earliest convenience.

Thanks.

jv16

pdalton wrote

I've used JV16 Power Tools for a very long time (decades?), and have had a Lifetime license for almost as long. Still, I don't use it frequently nor have I been using as many of its different features as many others have. However, I've recently been exploring it more and have run into difficulties that seem like they shouldn't exist in a product that's been around so long.

I do admit the possibility that some or all of these difficulties may be due to my own ignorance, but - even if that's true - it still shouldn't be as difficult as I've been experiencing and better onscreen "hints" should be used.

The overall issue I'm running into pertains to the modules intended to find, identify, and present a list of "problems" or of groups of files (e.g., System Cleaner, Duplicate File Finder, Big File Finder). In these, I cannot find any of the relatively simple types of data management/reporting features that would make the data output from each of these modules nearly as useful as I would have expected, particularly as those capabilities are so frequently available in other products that generate such "lists".

Specifically, when the resultant list of these modules' work is displayed, the only "easy to execute" capability that is apparent and seemingly available is "delete all". Beyond that, dealing with these lists of results seems problematic.

1. For example, just trying to delete some, but not all, of the rows from these lists seems much more difficult that it ought to be, principally because there seems to be no facility that permits a user to select a group (or groups) of rows to be "checked" or "unchecked" all at once (such as "Click" on a row, then "Shift-Click" or a different row farther down in the list to mark/unmark all of those rows at once). Instead, I've found that each row must be "unchecked" (or "checked") one at a time - this seems silly. On the other hand, if it already IS possible to select & mark groups of rows as I've described, please include a note on the screen about the method for doing that. If that capability is not now possible, however , please add this capability -- it shouldn't be difficult to do.

Thank you for your feedback!

There are a few different ways how you can select/unselect many items at one time. Firstly, you can select one row, then press down the Shift key of your keyboard and then select another row. This will make all items between these two rows selected/unselected.

Secondly, you can Right Click any result list to open a menu that has many different options helping you to select/unselect rows. For example, the Right Click menu in Software Uninstaller allows you to select/unselect all software of specific type or impact level.

And thirdly, Right Clicking the result list also has a feature called Select By Search Word which allows you to enter a search word to select any items from the list that match this search word.

Considering these three methods of selecting items from the result lists, what other methods would you suggest us to add?

pdalton wrote

2. I saw that those list displays DO permit sorting the list by the columns. However, when looking at a list of files, one of the most useful of those columns should be "File Type", but there all of the entries on every row is just the word "File" and the actual "file type" is not shown on the list at all. That pretty well makes that column totally useless. I hope this is just a "bug" and can be fixed quickly.

If not, it's an oversight that needs to be fixed ASAP.

I'm afraid I don't know which tool you are referring to. The results list of which tool should have "file type" column?

pdalton wrote

3. Potentially the most useful of the seemingly "missing" data management/reporting tools is any ability to save and/or export these lists for more thorough and/or later analysis before making decisions. It seems that, when one of these modules is run, if you don't "deal" with its listed results right then, or if you try to use a different module before dealing with that first module's list, then that first module's list disappears and the user must start over and generate an entirely new list, even just a few seconds later. I cannot imagine it wouldn't be useful to many to be able to "save" the most recent of such lists to be able to return and work on them later. Even more importantly, users should be able to export these lists (preferably as .csv files) so the information can more easily be manipulated and analyzed in an external product (e.g., Excel, Word, etc.). The absence of this capability is terribly frustrating when trying to deal with a list of thousands of "Duplicate Files". As you well know, software executables often are accompanied by necessary file(s) identical to a file that shipped with different software programs, but each of those programs "looks" for that file in a different location. So deleting some of those duplicates can cause real problems, so caution -- and time -- is required. And particularly when the list of such duplicates is quite long (hundreds or thousands), few users can or have the time to tackle what to do about all of those duplicates at once; instead, most users would likely prefer the ability to divide up that sort of "cleanup" chore into batches to be performed later at different times.

You can save the results lists by using the main app menu (click the three horizontal lines at the top left corner of the app) and choose "Save As". This feature supports saving the data in TXT, CSV, HTML and JSON file formats. The same functionality is also available in most tools if you Right Click the big "jv16 PowerTools" logo.

pdalton wrote

4. Finally, even the program's design that presents these lists as white text on a black background presents problems. After not finding the tools I've described above, I tried something I've done successfully many other times: Take a screenshot of each page, then save it as a .jpg image file; then use Acrobat Pro to create a single pdf file of all of those images (in my case, 10 pages) and make sure it's created as searchable text so it will OCR the text on those images. Finally, export that pdf file as an Excel file. But, this time, even THAT didn't work (the product was a real mess). I've done this successfully many times in the past, but admittedly those were created from images of black text on a white background. That makes me suspect JV16Tools' decision to present these lists in this "inverted view" is causing this difficulty.

I believe you are referring to the Dark Mode of jv16 PowerTools. If you don't wish to use that, you can change the UI back to normal mode from Settings > General > "Dark Mode".

By default, it is set to "automatic" meaning the app will use the Dark Mode if that has been enabled in your Windows settings, but you can also disable it from the settings.

Thank you for your feedback! Please let me know if these comments helped and let me know if there is anything I can do to make the program more user friendly and to better suit your needs.