First steps with BFM tutorial

Getting started overview

• Have a play with example files provided when BFM is installed, then
• you can adjust the structure of the containers to make a system that is logical for you, then
• start bringing in files from wherever they are at the moment.

1 Start the program

Introduction to containers and contents

2 First look at the main screen

See how the left is labelled "Containers" and the right "Contents". We'll be using the left to navigate through the hierarchy of containers and the right to select one or more files to play with.

3 Adjust for comfort

4 Contents display

• Click on the little arrow on the thumbnails setting and experiment with the sizes.

• Click on the little arrow on name - normal box to change the orders in which the files are displayed.
  As supplied BFM lists contents row by row. If you prefer them listed column by column this can be changed in the options
• The box on the top right is a filter which can be used to include or exclude files from the listing by name. For example typing x in the filter box will select only those files with an x in their name.
  • Don't forget to clear this after use. It goes yellow to remind you that some files might being hidden.
  • Experienced computer users might want to put a * or two in but wild-cards are not needed.

• If that wasn't enough excitement for one afternoon, you can see photos one at a time in a separate window by ticking the Image preview box then moving the mouse slowly over the list of contents. The new window can be moved and sized to suit. Close it using the 'X' in the top right or clicking on Image Preview again.

• The detail given about each file can be altered in the File listing part of settings. (More details here)

5 Container display

Clicking on the little plus and minus in a box in the containers expands or closes the hierarchy. You will be using this a lot.

If you click on toFile in the Shelves you'll notice that all these documents have a little book against them to indicate some sort of written document. But if you look at the file extension (the bit at the end of the name after the dot) you can see they are in different formats. (Also if you had the thumbnails on, as there aren't any pictures to show the display has been compacted to save space.)

6 Buttons

7 Selecting files to work with

If you want to select a block at a time then hold down the shift key and click on the 'far' corner of the block.

We are going to jump ahead a bit and look at one of the tools that we can use to keep our filing system neat and tidy. We'll return to the everyday stuff soon.

Clutter Buster

Do you remember that we established a rule: Either a container contains sub-containers or documents but not both? Our Cats container breaks this rule as it has six document files and two sub-containers. It isn't the end of the world but I'd really like you to try to keep containers and their contents separate as it will pay off handsomely in the long run.

It's all very well having rules but no matter how sensible they are they're not much good if you haven't got the tools to fix the job. This is where the Clutter buster comes in. It does two things:

1. Finds 'loose' files ...
2. ... then holds your hand as you put them in a proper place.

8 Clutter Buster in action

Let's see how it works by selecting Utilities then Clutter buster. After a moment it will report what it has found and give us the option to tidy up now.

Since we've come all this way we might as well continue, so click on the Tidy up now button or press T.

Now we get to the serious second part where we have to decide where these files should go. Take a moment to study the options. Points to note are: The clutter buster takes us through one container at a time. All but the bottom option work on all the documents together. The second and third options here are existing sub-containers of \Cats Or we might not be ready to file these properly yet and decide to put them in the SHELVES. If we put them in SHELVES we could look at them as thumbnails if they are pictures. Look carefully at the two options to move to SHELVES A general \clutter container A sub-container of \Clutter specially for these files

In this case all our photos are cats so it makes sense to file them in the \STORE under \Cats (second last option). Click on that and give it a name for the sub-container of mixed. Now the main contents display should go be empty and there will be a new Mixed container under Cats.

You shouldn't have to use the Clutter buster very often but it's there if you need it.

A few words about container and document names

• It is a bad idea to have spaces in container and document names.
• Generally stick to letters and numbers.
• Don't use a period except at the start of a file extension.
• Instead of spaces in names capitalise the first letter of each word.
  not like this
  not.like.this
  ButLikeThis
  BFM will do all this for you. In the last exercise we called a sub-container mixed but it now appears with a leading capital in the container listing. If we'd typed in yet more cats BFM would have given us YetMoreCats.

Simple file operations

Deleting and renaming files is easy. Let's start with single files.

9 Deleting one file

9.1	Go to the \Cats\Mixed container and show thumbnails of a convenient size.
9.2	Click once on the 'wooden table' to select it.
9.3	Either click on the delete button above or press D
9.4	At the 'are you sure' click on the Yes button or press N

10 Renaming one file

10.1	Click once on the cat in the corn field to select it.
10.2	Either click on the rename button above or press R
10.3	Give it a more appropriate name. How about cat in a cornfield ...
	Uh oh! What's this? BFM has twigged that we've forgotten the .jpg extension and extensions are very important (see box below). It's not forcing an extension on us, simply asking us what we really want. This means you can forget about extensions when renaming but you will be always be prompted just in case.
	Note how the spaces in the name were closed-up and capitals added as described above.

A word about file extensions

A file extension is the bit at the end of a filename following the period. Here are some common ones you might come across

.htm or .html	Web page opened by a web browser
.doc or .docx	Microsoft Word document
.pdf	PDF opened by Acrobat reader
.txt	Plain text. Notepad would work on this.
.exe	Program
.jpg or .jpeg	Photograph

It doesn't matter if these are in upper or lowercase but they need to match the internal format of the file because for example it wouldn't make sense say to try to edit a program in a word processor.

999 times out of a thousand when renaming files leave the extension well alone. BFM will help you if you forget.

Deleting multiple files

Just highlight a bunch of files and follow the same prompt. That's so easy we won't practice it.

11 Renaming multiple files

You often want to rename photographs that have been uploaded from a camera. Or there are a bunch you'd like to add a bit more information to in bulk. We'll now see just the basics of how that is done.

11.1	Click on the \Cats\Mine container and set the thumbnails to a convenient size. Here we have pictures of two lovely animals called Robo (the small clever one, sometimes called "TB", short for two breakfasts) and BlackJack (the large softy) which ought to be properly labelled. Let's start by renaming the photos where both animals appear together.
11.2	Select the three photos where they appear together by clicking on them. Now press R or click on the Rename button.
11.3	Here is a screen that leads you through the many possible ways of renaming a bunch of documents. The controls are on the left and what the results will look like are shown on the right. Note that the display on the right is only a preview. Nothing actually happens until the Rename button is clicked. Renaming will be dealt with in full later as an advanced topic here. For now just follow the steps and have a browse through the options.
11.4	For this exercise I want to completely rename the three photos so they are consistent. Obviously they can't all be given exactly the same name so this is going to be a fixed part followed by a counter. After clicking the New Serialised set option and typing in the static part, BjAndRobo the variable part is added in to the new names appearing in the third column. The green squares are traffic lights that would warn us if for example we were going to end up with duplicate or illegal names.
11.5	That looks good so hit the R-button to do the dirty deed.
11.6	There are two pictures of Robo ProwlingSept07.jpg and TBJul05.jpg that don't actually have her name on them. We could use the same renaming style as we used above in 11.4 but that would give us Robo001.jpg and Robo002.jpg which loses the dates. Here's how to add a new bit without losing the old. Select the two pictures of Robo ProwlingSept07.jpg and TBJul05.jpg then press R or click on Rename. Select the Add new bit to all style... ...and put it at the front. After checking the preview, click on Rename and the job is done.

Later on we'll see some good uses for renaming in bulk.

Moving and copying files

Now we've got a \Mixed container for cats let's put all the snow-cats in there as well. Here's how:

12.1	Go to the \Cats\snow container and select all three cats. There is a special shortcut that is common to many Windows programs to 'select all'. Hold the Ctrl key and press A. Doing it again deselects all.
12.2	Press M or click on the Move/copy button
12.3	Again the controls are on the left. The right hand half shows the containers in \STORE. You should recognise these and have no problem clicking on the + of \Cats to show the sub-containers.
12.4	Click on Mixed which is where we want the files to go.
12.5	Click on the Move button and confirm.

That's it for simple moves inside the \STORE and SHELVES. You can put things in SHELVES by selecting the second Destination type. There are more advanced options described here that we'll be using later but for now that's it!

Other file buttons

O is for open

• Open is only available when a single file is selected.
• This uses the file extension to tell what program to use.

T is for tags

How do I?

Summing up the first tutorial