Empty dirs wrongly excluded in move

[Hans.Schmidts]

I wondered, why I always got warning "Folders with hidden items will not be moved", although filter was *.*, no files or folders excluded, all "Other Filters" set to "Ignore" and "Exclude protected operating system files" not checked.

After the move operation I noticed, that an empty directory was not moved! This happens if "Only compare files" is selected - I think that it's a bug (or at least not useful handling of directories) that BC excludes empty subdirectories in move operation (especially since the folder was not expanded and not scanned in background). If I select a folder and have not excluded anything, I don't want to be bothered and confused with warning "Folders with hidden items will not be moved". BC should move the empty folders in this case.

BC 3.3.7 build 15876
WinXP pro SP3

[Aaron]

Hello,

If you enable Suppress Filters, do any items show up in the 'Empty' folder?

A teal item would indicate that there is at least one type of filter still hiding items in that directory. A completely empty (size 0, file count 0) shouldn't be visible when "Only Compare Files" is enabled. I would expect it to be removed from view as soon as there were no items within the folder.

Is this behavior reproducible for you if you follow a specific set of steps? Following the rough set of steps above, I see the folder removed from the source side during the Move step.

[Hans.Schmidts]

1. It's a really empty folder, no files shown with "Suppress Filters", and no files shown by other tools.

2. It's reproducible all the time. The problem is obviously that BC scans the folder to be moved, and if "Only compare files" is selected then it internally filters all empty folders, and then confuses the user with unexpected warning "Folders with hidden items will not be moved" and does not move this empty folder.

3. You may not have the right test case: Problem is not moving a single empty dir, but moving some "tree" with empty subdirs somewhere in that tree.

[Aaron]

A full screen screenshot showing the item that is not moving with suppress filters enabled might help.

Given a tree of subfolders, where one of which might be 0, this subfolder should be removed from the view as soon as the files are selected and scanned (which, is triggered with the Move command) if Only Compare Files is enabled. If you then Move the parent folder, this folder would not be deleted since the empty subfolder is still technically present and not moved inside of it.

[Hans.Schmidts]

You described exactly what the problem is (so screen shot will not give more information). The user wants to move a directory and knows that nothing is filtered, but the internal handling of BC lead to this warning. That's exactly what needs to be changed: Same way as a totally empty folder can be moved if I select it directly, the internal filtering of really empty folders due to "Only compare files" must be handled different form user caused filters, and must not exclude this subdir from the move operation.

[Aaron]

If an item has been removed due to any filter (Display Filter, Folder View modes, Name Filters, Other Filters, etc), then it will not be moved during the move command since it has been filtered out.

The Move (or Copy, or other dialogs) has the option to include filtered items. If this is selected, it will be moved; if it is not selected the folder would not be moved or deleted.

Since it is not moved or deleted, the original parent folder could not be deleted either since there is still content in it.

This is by design and only occurs if you are filtering out those folders. If you want to include the folders in the move, they should be shown using the other Folder View modes (Always Show Folders or Compare Files and Folder Structure). If you want to clean up and delete empty folders on the source side, we do not currently handle this automatically. You would need to delete them manually.

[Hans.Schmidts]

I still think that the behaviour is not user friendly and that it could and should be changed in some future release. But I understand that you don't plan to change this , so this topic can be closed. Thanks for your replies.