Not email, but I have a hunch you'll know.

[chrisjj]

I recently had to triage a thousand-odd emails. In Thunderbird, it was just two
keypresses x 1000. Down the list viewing the preview, then tap
one (OK, modified) key to tag Yes or No. Great. When done, exported the Yesses.

How can I do this for PDFs? For the life of me I cannot find anything decent. On Windows 7.

Thanks.

Chris

[Bamb0]

Can you do a search for " *.pdf " chris and then delete everything ya want to?

[chrisjj]

Originally Posted by Bamb0

Can you do a search for " *.pdf " chris and then delete everything ya want to?

If I did have only two statuses no and yes, I could use the Delete hkey to set the status:

1 Copy all to temp folder
2 In Explorer using Preview, step through temp using Down-Arrow and pressing Delete or not.
3 Take temp as the Yes set.
4 Diff Yes against temp and take the orphans as the No set.

But that won't suffice, since I have three statuses, None (the initial, and default), No and Yes.

I guess what I need is file attribute/tag that I could set on a single key in e.g. Explorer, then filter to get the results.

EDIT: "file attribute/tag that I could set on a single key in e.g. Explorer" could be case of extension. I.e. set all to .pdf to lower case, then use some macro? to set No to Pdf and Yes to pDf.

[JeremyNicoll]

Why do you need to copy the files to Temp?

Why not just work through them where they are, pressing Delete on those you don't want? In W8.1 (and W7 too?) you can turn off the confirmation that a file should really be deleted when you press Del (or click the red X icon) -- just remember to turn it back on later if it normally is.

By the end of that you'd have files-to-be-deleted sitting in Trash, and those-to-keep in their original folder.

I might at that point sideline the ones-to-keep by moving them somewhere else, so now there would be no PDFs in the original folder.

Then within Trash restore all the trash-PDF files to the original folder. I'd skim through them again to be certain no files-to-keep accidentally got into that group, before completely deleting them.

Finally the sidelined files-to-keep could be moved back to their original home.


Or ... you could rename files to be deleted by prefixing their names by, say "!!" - care needed not to replace their names by that though. Only use "!!" if no genuine filenames start with those chars.

[chrisjj]

Originally Posted by JeremyNicoll

Why do you need to copy the files to Temp?

To preserve the original set.

Originally Posted by JeremyNicoll

Why not just work through them where they are, pressing Delete on those you don't want?

There are none I don't want.

Originally Posted by JeremyNicoll

By the end of that you'd have files-to-be-deleted sitting in Trash, and those-to-keep in their original folder. ... Then within Trash restore all the trash-PDF files to the original folder.

Nice idea. That would optimise the two statuses solution. Sadly I have three.

Thanks.

[JeremyNicoll]

Perhaps if you explained better what the end result is meant to be, that would help.

I don't think you've explained why there's three statuses.

I'm also puzzled by "There are none I don't want.". Even if you're not trying to delete some portion of the PDF files, are you not trying to find a way to separate some of them from the others?


Do you have to preview /visually/ the files to decide which status each file should get? Can you not use a file search tool instead, & work with its list of matching files?


Or use redirected 'dir' to generate a list of candidate files then as you preview them annotate that list with either a "Y" or "N" next to files you want to put into the Y or N groups. Later massage the annotated list into a .cmd file (or two or three) to rename or move or whatever the files as needed.

[JeremyNicoll]

Originally Posted by chrisjj

EDIT: "file attribute/tag that I could set on a single key in e.g. Explorer" could be case of extension. I.e. set all to .pdf to lower case, then use some macro? to set No to Pdf and Yes to pDf.

Does File Explorer have a programmable way to act on a single selected file?

You could define two context menu entries which would run one of two commands on a selected file, but is there a way to map two different hotkeys onto those two actions? I guess even a single command, with no hotkey, if you positioned it as close to the top of the context menu as you could wouldn't be TOO irksome to pick. One (eg .cmd) command would be ok if it then asked you which flag you wanted to set.


AutoHotKey might be able to map a keypress of your choice onto "check active window is File Explorer; open context menu, choose specified menu-item". But a quick google didn't find me anything obviously matching that; it's also complicated by hits about processing (context) menus displayed by ahk scripts.


With a different approach I think AutoHotKey can discover what file is currently selected & then issue a command involving that file. Google for:

ahk selected file in "file explorer" window


Apart from renaming files, a more versatile way of adding your own attribute is to use Alternate Data Streams; eg the way that Windows tags a just-downloaded file as 'unsafe' is via one. You can set & clear them with redirected 'echo' commands & one of the nirsoft utilities -- https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/altern...a_streams.html -- lists all ADSes. For example:

echo JN was here > "C:\Test\Pqr.txt:Zone.Identifier:$DATA"

creates a zero-byte file with name "C:\Test\Pqr.txt" plus an invisible file (which is what ADSes are) associated with that empty file, containing "JN was here". If you do something similar using an extant normal file the command creates the invisible file only.

Some anti-malware apps (eg FRST) will flag such things; one legitimate use I know of is by Dropbox which saves DB-related attributes of files copied/moved out of Dropbox to somewhere else in them, presumably so that if such a file is later copied/moved back into Dropbox it retains those attributes.

You cannot as far as I know 'type' the contents of an ADS, but 'more' works:

C:\>type "C:\Test\Pqr.txt:Zone.Identifier:$DATA"
The filename, directory name or volume label syntax is incorrect.

C:\>type < "C:\Test\Pqr.txt:Zone.Identifier:$DATA"
The syntax of the command is incorrect.

C:\>more < "C:\Test\Pqr.txt:Zone.Identifier:$DATA"
JN was here



Also 'dir' will show which files have ADSs:

C:\>dir /R "C:\Test"
Volume in drive C has no label.
Volume Serial Number is F607-7930

Directory of C:\Test

13/10/2025 02:04 <DIR> .
13/10/2025 02:04 <DIR> ..
13/10/2025 02:04 0 Pqr.txt
14 Pqr.txt:Zone.Identifier:$DATA
1 File(s) 0 bytes
2 Dir(s) 195,378,995,200 bytes free

C:\>

See: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/ar...treams-in-ntfs


You could also look at the demo versions of some "Explorer replacements" - third party programs which do MUCH more than File Explorer does. Many of these have existed for several tens of years and their authors have added every extra facility they (or their customers) could think of.

The drawback is that it's difficult to work out /quickly/ whether any of them do things that one wants, enough to learn how to do them. With each new release of Windows I wonder about installing one of these (most or all can be configured to replace FE - which I think I wouldn't do, or simply be another application which one can run on occasion for enhanced file management.)

[chrisjj]

Originally Posted by JeremyNicoll

Perhaps if you explained better what the end result is meant to be, that would help.

The end result is a triage. The set separated into three subsets by my selection of each individually.

Originally Posted by JeremyNicoll

I don't think you've explained why there's three statuses.

That's what triage is.

Originally Posted by JeremyNicoll

I'm also puzzled by "There are none I don't want.". Even if you're not trying to delete some portion of the PDF files, are you not trying to find a way to separate some of them from the others?

Yes. Triage!

Originally Posted by JeremyNicoll

Do you have to preview /visually/ the files to decide which status each file should get?

Yes. As I said. "viewing the preview".

Originally Posted by JeremyNicoll

Or use redirected 'dir' to generate a list of candidate files then as you preview them annotate that list with either a "Y" or "N" next to files you want to put into the Y or N groups.

I could, but if you imagine doing that in the email case I outlined, you can see how errorprone it is over a thousand.

[chrisjj]

Originally Posted by JeremyNicoll

Does File Explorer have a programmable way to act on a single selected file?

I'd love to know. But none I've found.

Originally Posted by JeremyNicoll

With a different approach I think AutoHotKey can discover what file is currently selected & then issue a command involving that file. Google for:

ahk selected file in "file explorer" window

Thanks. I'll look there if I can find nothing already on keys.

Originally Posted by JeremyNicoll

Apart from renaming files, a more versatile way of adding your own attribute is to use Alternate Data Streams

Windows File Properties seems like a more direct and reliable alternative, not relying on invisible side files which require write access.

Originally Posted by JeremyNicoll

You could also look at the demo versions of some "Explorer replacements" - third party programs which do MUCH more than File Explorer does. Many of these have existed for several tens of years and their authors have added every extra facility they (or their customers) could think of.

The drawback is that it's difficult to work out /quickly/ whether any of them do things that one wants, enough to learn how to do them.

Yes I could and I agree about the difficulty. I put considerable effort in to Directory Opus before falling at the last hurdle when I found its PDF Preview is not suitable.

Another possible is Multi Commander. I'm hoping it can reliably use the Windows iPreviewManager-set PDF viewer but...

Thanks.

[JeremyNicoll]

Originally Posted by chrisjj

The end result is a triage. The set separated into three subsets by my selection of each individually.

That's what triage is.

Only sometimes; the "tri" in "triage" doesn't mean, or derive from, 3.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triage

[JeremyNicoll]

Lots of years ago I used IBM's ISPF tool - which included a very versatile text editor, browser (like edit but faster & you couldn't change files) and utilities for finding & working with lists of files, & lists of contents ("members") of directory-like files.

In both forms of list there was a command-entry field to the left of each filename or member.

In a member-list you could eg place a "b" (for browse) or "e" (edit) next to many members' names, or a selection of "b" or "e" (or various other letters for other standard commands), then press Enter & one-by-one the required commands would be run for those members.


You could also type a command (I no longer recall the syntax) somehow against a single member (or in the other list, filename) eg

jn p q r / s t

which would run the command "jn p q r <filenm|membernm> s t" for the file or member you typed it against.

If you'd placed an "=" in the command field next to selected other filenames/membernames in the same list, the same template command would be executed for all the equals-marked files/members.


There's a Windows application that was primarily written to emulate the ISPF mainframe editor/browser, plus add features in IBM's other major editor, plus add features people always wanted. Latterly the authors emulated the file- & member-list utilities too.

I've always intended to install the product mainly for the list-handling facilities. A handful of their editor's facilities might be useful to me, but I already use an earlier commercial editor emulator for which I've written thousands of lines of code to implement additional commands & don't fancy rewriting all of that in the internal scripting language of the newer product.

Still, this (free) product might make what you're trying to do, if you're still trying, easier. It's called "SPFlite". See:

http://www.spflite.com/HtmlS/W_FM_Fi...Managerdisplay

for an example of a leafnames display, with a command field to the lhs of each leaf file.


See: http://www.spflite.com/HtmlS/M_Sample_Macros.html

& scroll down to the ones whose names start with "FM" to see some examples of commands you can write, to process files within a file Manager display.

[chrisjj]

Cool. Thanks. It seems a bit above my learning capacity at the moment but I will definitely take a look when more time available.