MultiTouch Online Help for Release 1.0.0.4

 

Index

1. Introduction
2. Main menu
3. Step 1 – Items to touch
4. Step 2 – Synchronization
5. Step 3 – Touch destinations date(s) with
6. Step 4 – Choose Files/Folders
   7. Step 5 – Select Files/Folders
   8. Step 6 – Touch the dates

9. Release notes

 

I.  Introduction

This program is free to use for both private and business entities. You can redistribute it, in its entirety, but without asking for a compensation.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY.  Any piece of software has some kind of bugs at a certain stage of the development process and this one will likely make no exception (although I always aim at perfection so I have high hopes!) therefore use it at your own risk.

This utility allows you to touch (change) the files and/or folders system dates.

It comes handy, for example, when you copy some folders onto another drive. The Windows file system will preserve the files dates but not the folders’. This can be rather annoying at times.
Another time when you may find MultiTouch useful is when you download the pictures from your smartphone or camera and you edit some photos, even just to rotate them, and you lose the date when the picture was taken. With MultiTouch you can quickly restore the original modification dates by reading the photos Exif information (metadata stored in the picture file).
And surely you will find other situations when MultiTouch can be a helpful friend.

MultiTouch adopts a quite straight forward user interface by enabling the subsequent steps only when you have chosen all the necessary options of the current action.
For example, when you start the program you can only manage the choices of the panel next to the Step 1 icon. After you have chosen which dates you want to touch, then the Synchronization panel will become available, and so on. This kind of approach can prevent possible mistakes by the user.
Hover the mouse over the icons and buttons in the forms to get instructions on how to proceed.

If you don’t see any tips when the cursor is over the icon, please check the Tools | Options | Enable Tooltips menu. If it’s not checked then click in the box on the left of the Enable Tooltips menu item.

Developing a program such as this requires time and effort. If you find this program useful, please consider making a donation by visiting the page https://www.torgian.com/donations

This program uses the Metadata Extractor library to read the Exif information from the files. This library is developed by Drew Noakes and contributors (https://drewnoakes.com/code/exif) and it’s under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0).

 

II.  Main menu

• File | Exit
  Closes MultiTouch.
• Tools | Options | Enable Tooltips
  By clicking on the square box to the left of the Enable Tooltips menu you tell MultiTouch to show the context help boxes on top of the program icons. If, by clicking again on the box, you remove the check sign, you won’t get the tooltips anymore. When you have mastered MultiTouch enough you’ll be happy to turn this off, I believe.
• Help | Gettting Started
  Just an intro to help you out if you’re not too keen on long manuals.
• Help | Online Help
  Takes you to this lovely and helpful document.
• Help | About
  Info about MultiTouch

 

III. Step 1 – Items to touch

This is the obvious starting point.
You choose whether you want to implement your changes on files (selected by default) or folders. You can’t do both simultaneously. If you need to do that, you will have to repeat the process by selecting files first and then folders, or vice-versa.
To the right of these two options you can choose which dates you want to modify. This is a multiple choice so you can select all of them or a single date only. Step 2 will only be enabled when you choose at least one of these dates.

 

IV. Step 2 – Synchronization

If you select Yes, you will be able to synchronize the dates you chose in Step 1 between a source and a destination. In other words, by selecting this option you can set the files/folders dates with the ones of files/folders with the same names but located in a different drive or folder. You could also select the same files as a source but pick the Exif data information stored in the file so that the destination files will be touched with the original dates stored in their own Exif metadata. This last option will obviously not work on folders.
If you select No, you can touch the files/folders dates with either the system date and time or one that you enter manually in Step 3.

 

V. Step 3 – Touch destinations date(s) with

In this panel you can choose what you want to touch the files/folders dates with. If you selected No in the previous step then the Source Dates option is not available and if you chose Yes then System Date and The Following Date are turned off. Please refer to Step 2 for details.

 

VI. Step 4 – Choose Files/Folders

By clicking on the Choose Files/Folders button you will get to the form where you can actually do the job.

 

VII. Step 5 – Select Files/Folders

NOTE: If you selected No for Synchronization in Step 2, the right hand side of the form, the one about the Source files/folders, will be disabled.

In the left hand side of the Files/Folders to Touch form is the part concerning the Destination Files/Folders (the ones you want to change). On the top of this area you can see the Select Destination Files (or Folders) button. If you click on this button you can choose the files that you want to change the dates, on your local machine.
Once you have clicked Open in the Files/Folders browser dialog box you will see the files you have selected in the list box underneath and the path in the Destination box right beneath the button.
If you chose System Date or The Following Date in Step 3 then simply check the files you want to work on or, more likely, tick the Select/Deselect All check box underneath the list box to select them all, and click on the Touch Now button to apply the changes.

NOTE: If you check the Recursive Folders check box, all the files (or folders) in the folders under the one you have selected will be touched, regardless of their name. In other words, if you checked only a few files from the list then only those files will be touched in their folder (the starting folder) but in the folders under the current one all the files (or folders) will be affected, so please be very careful when using this option.

If in Step 2 you selected Synchronization (Yes) then the right hand side of the form and the buttons between the two files/folders lists will be enabled. Click on the Select Source Files (or Folders) button to pick the files/folder from where you want the dates to be passed on to the destination. Important: if you want to get the dates from the Exif metadata information stored in the pictures, you must check the Use Metadata Where Possible check box BEFORE clicking on the Select Source Files button.
Once you have selected both the source and the destination files/folders you can, if needed, use one of the following buttons to help you out with long lists of objects:
Match – performs a comparison between the two lists and highlights in blue the ones that have the same names. Useful for highlighting foreign files/folders that would not be synchronized.
Remove Unmatched – removes from the lists the items that aren’t highlighted in blue as a result of the Match button.
Highlight Different – marks in red the files/folders that have different date/time stamps. Useful for highlighting files/folders that will actually need not be synchronized.
Remove Equals – removes from the lists the items that aren’t highlighted in red as a result of the Remove Equals button.

 

VIII. Step 6 – Touch Now

By clicking on the Touch Now button you start the actual process of updating the files/folders in the Destination list box. Only the ones with a check mark will be affected, unless the Recursive Folders check box is ticked (please see the note in Step 5 for details). That’s it, you’re done!

 

IX. Release notes

Here you will find a brief list of added and/or amended items in each consecutive MultiTouch build.

[1.0.0.3]   17 September 2018

• Bug fix for the Exif dates. Before this fix, it could happen that the dates stored in the Exif metadata of a picture file would be read in the wrong format. It turned out that sometimes the dates came out in the American format (mm/dd/yyyy) instead of the European (dd/mm/yyyy) despite of the correct locale setting.

[1.0.0.4]   17 April 2019

• New Shortcut button added. By pressing this button you will get preset all the options you would be required to select if you want to work on Exif information. In other words, if you want to touch the dates of picture files by getting the information from the files metadata, which is why I often use MultiTouch, you should select Created-Modified-Accessed Dates, then Synchronization: Yes, Touch Destination Date(s) with: Source Dates, Choose Files/Folders and eventually check the Use Metadata Where Possible checkbox. Now all this repetitive tasks can be achieved by just pressing a button.