PCWorld Magazine review

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PC World

If you're looking for an all-in-one directory tool for everything from printing tree views of directories, to finding duplicate files, to doing mass-renaming of files and more, you'd do well to give Directory Report ($25, ten-day free trial) a try. This file management utility has techie tools for just about any directory-related task you might have, and many you may not have even heard of.

Directory Report displays folders in a tree-like format, and gives you a comprehensive set of tools for managing files and folders. Run the program, tell it what directory you want to consider as its root (for example, C: or your user account), and Directory Report quickly scans your system and displays all of your directories and files in a familiar tree structure, like Windows Explorer or any number of file management utilities. Click the + next to any folder to expand it; click the - to collapse it.

At this point, you've got so many choices about what to do, you may not know where to begin. Want to filter the view of your files and folders by size, date, owner, and more, and exclude certain folders? Yes, it can do that. You can also print the contents of folders, compare the contents of files and folders, find file duplicates, and much more.

Directory Report does a great job at every task you throw at it. It can find duplicate files via several different methods, such as a byte-by-byte comparison, calculating checksums, and the more common but less accurate method of comparing names and file sizes. There's a lot more to Directory Report as well, such as renaming multiple files in a single pass and changing file attributes.

The question is whether all that power is worth $25 to you. It's clearly superior to the $30 Easy Duplicate Finder because it offers many more tools than just finding duplicate files. But those who want a comprehensive folder tool may well find it worth the price.

--Preston Gralla