This identification, at file level, can be refined to include or exclude files based on dates or date ranges, i.e. creation date, modification date, or last accessed date. Further options available are the inclusion or exclusion of files by attribute, e.g. system files, hidden files, read only files, etc.

Why analysis in a spreadsheet? Spreadsheets are wonderful applications built to handle large amounts of similar data. Using sort, group and pivot tables, you can more intelligently identify the data assets in your organization, and put your existing software investments in a spreadsheet application to better use. We do not want to reinvent the wheel, hence our decision to provide for exports to common data formats.

Why printing is printing not directly supported in  Sumation™ Explorer? Just printing of directories serves very little purpose. Our objective was not to build software that just did something with considering the benefit to the user. Through first analyzing, sorting, grouping or creating new views of your storage usage as you would like to see it or present it is much more beneficial. This includes the ability to graph your analysis as you see fit, and make better use of the paper you will be using and in the way that you present the relevant information to users, or historic information for your personal record keeping.

For example, you may want to restructure a folder at the place you are copying it to. Alternatively you may wish to preserve the folder structure of the current location, but you have filtered your search for *.doc files only. In Windows® Explorer you would not be able to preserve the folder structure had you done this...

Sumation™ Explorer allows you to specify the structure options you wish to retain. You can leave a shortcut or hyperlinked html file in place of the moved files (where users are accustomed to finding them) and these will point to the new location they have been moved to.

Create new folder structures from file type or date information, or copy files to a Sumation Defined Area. (see below).

Create new folder structures from file type or date information, or move files to a Sumation Defined Area. (see below).

Create new folder structures from file type or date information, or 'delete' files to a Defined Deletion Area. (see below).

The benefit is that you can then install and use Sumation™ Explorer on that system too to better implement your storage resource management.

• Defined Storage Areas
  DSAs are online storage, i.e. they can still be accessed by users on the network.
• Defined Archive Areas
  DAAs are used to prepare or organize files for archiving to CD/DVD or tape. The premise is that the data in the files are assets, but that these assets can be archived because they do not need to be online any longer. Archives to CD/DVD can be cataloged using our soon to be released Sumation™ Media Catalog for identifying the location of these offline-files.
• Defined Deletion Areas
  DDAs can be used for deletion candidate files, i.e. files you are relatively sure can be deleted, but would like to put somewhere else to ensure that their deletion is confirmed by the users of those files. Conceptually DDAs are 'network recycle bins' that don't get overwritten until you actually remove the files in them.