File Content Explorer Light

This is a restricted version of the app "File Content Explorer", which only displays the content of folders with a maximum of five files and limits the display of Office files to 50 lines. The screenshots are from the unrestricted version, which is also available in the store.

This app is a combination of a simple file manager and a file viewer with a practical preview function for all common file types. In addition to the overview, the file management functions also work in the detail view in order to ensure the most efficient file management possible. No installed programs are required to display the supported file types and all files can be viewed without risk, as no macros or scripts are executed. The use of separate programs for file operations and file viewing can be inefficient when managing a large number of files due to frequent program changes and the preview functions and thumbnails of Windows Explorer have several limitations in contrast to this app. Windows Explorer only shows the thumbnails and previews for harmless files and requires certain settings and installed programs for this. For example, Windows Explorer only shows Office files as a preview if they do not come from other computers, do not contain macros and a suitable Office program is installed, while thumbnails are only displayed for files that are already locally saved.

On the other hand, this app already shows as much of the content of the supported file types as possible in the overview and the delay-free preview, so that the detail view usually only has to be opened for a complete display of the content. The overview consists of two halves in which all items of a selected folder are displayed and between which various file operations can be carried out. Depending on the settings and the number of files, a flat view can be opened in one half via the context menu in which all files in the subfolders are displayed instead of the folders. Unsupported file types are displayed in the overview with their icon or as mere characters, while they are first displayed in hex format in the detail view, which can be opened by double-clicking, the context menu or the enter key. In the detail view you can switch between content display and hex format for supported file types and each file can also be opened with the linked program. The overview can also be filtered according to various criteria, whereby any number of filters can be created and saved. In addition to the usual keyboard navigation and support of the delete key in the overview and the detail view, it is possible to search for items in the overview by their initial letter and use the backspace key to exit all views.

For file management, this app supports the file operations copy, mirror, delete, compare and share. When mirroring, only new and changed files are copied to the target folder, where unnecessary files can also be deleted in order to keep it in sync with the source folder. In addition, SHA-256 hashes of files and folders can be created and compared via the context menu, and when a file is renamed, the file extension can be checked or suggested based on the content. The integrated file viewer can display or play text files, image files, video files, audio files, Office Open XML files, PDF files, RTF files, ZIP files and folders. The content type, a search text or regular expression for the content of text files, four OR-related file patterns, a file size range, a date range and two OR-related folder patterns can be specified as filter criteria for each filter. The Office files of Word, PowerPoint and Excel are displayed and treated as plain text like text files. Text files can be compared line by line with or without display in synchronized form by automatically inserting blank lines and filtered according to their content, with the occurrences being displayed in the detail view.

Due to specific app restrictions, this app does not display files that have the System or Hidden file attribute set, and no folders that have the Hidden file attribute set. However, these file attributes are usually set only for various files or folders of Windows or some programs. In addition, these elements are not included in any file operations. These restrictions also apply to the shortcut files with the file extension lnk and url. The only exception is deleting a folder, where corresponding items are also deleted.