Adding Folder Contents

The Adding Folder Contents dialog is displayed for each folder that you drag from Windows Explorer and drop onto a folder on the Files and folders page. It allows you to specify filtering criteria that InstallMate applies to files and subfolders of the main folder. It is essentially a simplified version of the Add Files to Project dialog, with which it shares its file filtering mechanism.

Dialog fields and options

This dialog box contains the following fields and options.

Attribute	Description
(unnamed)	The topmost field displays the name of the source folder that you are adding to the project. It is for information only; you cannot change it.
File filter	Enter the filter pattern that specifies which files from the folder (and optional subfolders) should be added to the project, subject to further criteria below. A filter pattern is a file name that contains one or more "" or "?" wildcards. You may specify several patterns at once by separating them with semicolons; see the description of the Exclude files matching* field below for examples.
Add	Click this button to add all eligible files in the current folder and optional subfolders to the current installation folder on the Files and folders page. The folder is added as a subfolder of the current installation folder; this allows you to drag & drop a mix of files and folders from Windows Explorer to the tree and get the result you would normally expect.
Skip	Click this button to skip the current folder and its subfolders.
Include Hidden	Check this box to include files that match the File filter pattern even if they are marked Hidden. In many cases, Hidden files are auxiliary files that should not be installed, but are instead created automatically by the application or Windows. For example, Windows Help uses Hidden files for keyword search and indexing information; these files are automatically re-created as needed and should not be installed separately.
Include System	Check this box to include files that match the File filter pattern even if they are marked System. In many cases, System files are special-purpose files that should not be installed as part of the normal Setup process.
Include Setup files	Check this box to include files that match the File filter pattern even if they are part of Setup applications; clear it to omit them. The reason to omit them is that InstallMate automatically installs its own Setup files for the project (specifically, Setup.exe and Setup.ini); if you include others yourself, this might cause unintended interactions between InstallMate's Setup files and others. Moreover, they would not serve any useful purpose and just take up space in the distribution package.
Include empty files	Check this box to include files that match the File filter pattern even if they are empty, i.e., have a file size of 0. Although these files will install correctly, they are often used as markers or lock files that should not be installed, but are instead created by the application when needed.
Include subfolders	Check this box to add all eligible files from subfolders in addition to the files in the current folder. InstallMate applies the same filter patterns and inclusion or exclusion criteria to files in subfolders as it does for files in the main folder. Note: These criteria are not applied to the subfolders themselves; that is, all subfolders will be searched, whether or not their names match any of the filter patterns or other attributes.
Preserve folders	Check this box if you checked Include subfolders and want to preserve the existing folder structure. In that case, InstallMate will add not just all matching files, but will also re-create the subfolder tree on the Files and folders page. If you clear this box, all files will end up in the main folder, in effect "flattening" the original folder tree.
Include empty folders	Check this box if you checked both Include subfolders and Preserve folders and want to include all subfolders, even if they do not contain files or subfolders with files. If you clear this box, InstallMate will only re-create non-empty subfolders on the Files and folders page.
Exclude files matching	Enter the file filter patterns for files to exclude even if they pass all other criteria. This option is intended to filter out classes of files that typically are used for "scratch" purposes only, or should otherwise not be installed as files. The default pattern list filters out backup files, various temporary and system files, and shortcut (.lnk) files that cannot be reliably installed as simple files, but should be re-created on the Files and folders page instead.
Reset filter	Click this button to reset all filter settings to the values they had when the Adding Folder Contents dialog box appeared, i.e., the settings that you used the last time. This command is useful to quickly restore the filter settings.
Defaults	Click this button to reset all filter settings to the "factory" defaults. This is useful if you have modified the filters extensively and want to restart with reasonable defaults.