Removing Saved Visual Filters

[longfellow]

At 30+ items, my Visual Filter list has gotten long and unwieldy; I'd like to wipe it and start over fresh. I assume the place to do this is the registry, specifically:

HKCU\Software\ZabaraKatranemia Plc\xplorer2\History\Filters

Is it safe to simply delete this Key? (x2 will rebuild it on next start?) Or do I need to delete the individual data and leave the key?

Or should I just leave well enough alone?

While we're in the registry, is there a setting to limit the number of filters x2 saves? 7 or so would do me fine. (Nothing on this in registry.txt, and no obvious key that I could see.)

Thanks

[nikos]

you can zap this key without worry
or just prune out those you don't need, making sure you renumber the remaining entries in order

all history lists have as many items as you specify in tools | Options
the default is 30 but applies to all lists not just filters

ps. whenever lists get big like this the combo autocompletion is invaluable; just type a few characters of what you want to find and hit the up arrow a few times to fetch matching strings

[JRz]

[...] whenever lists get big like this the combo autocompletion is invaluable; just type a few characters of what you want to find and hit the up arrow a few times to fetch matching strings

To add to this (to take away any doubt ): the 'few characters' can be anything from the item you want to find, so it's not resctricted to the start of the string to find! This is a very cool way to get to an item very quickly (works in all history-like combo's as far as I know)

So for instance, if you just type 'j' in the combo and hit the Up-arrow, it matches '*.jpg', 'Just-In-Time-Debugging.doc', 'cookie in a jar.mp3', etc.

Just keep hitting Up-arrow until you get to the item you want. It goes without saying that the more restrictive your 'search-string' is, the less matches you'll get (In large history lists, using only one character may not help you that much I mean )

Try it. I'm sure you'll like it!

[longfellow]

OK, thanks! Mission accomplished!

Also thanks, Nikos and JRz, for the autocompletion tips: it is indeed a treat to use!

[Gerard_I]

Things seem to have changed - I can't find ...\History\Filters anywhere under HKCU\Software\ZabaraKatranemia Plc\...

Can some who knows please post the latest info.

Many thanks.


UPDATE
---------

Found them myself - they're now under HKCU\Software\ZabaraKatranemia Plc\xplorer2_UC.global\Hyper filters

Thing to note is that new visual filters are not added until you close Xplorer2.They will appear in and can be selected from the poplists etc in Xplorer2 itself, but they won't be in the above location in the registry until after a clean exit has occurred. - Which is why I couldn't find it before by searching for the name of the filter I'd just created and wanted to delete. I was doing so without having quit Xplorer2 since creating the filter.

[JRz]

[...]Thing to note is that new visual filters are not added until you close Xplorer2.[...]

This is by design. Settings are saved upon exit if so configured. Among these are the history lists and such...

[Kilmatead]

As an observation, you'll note that while these registry entries are created upon closure (or upon explicitly saving the settings), they are not actually saved as part of the "Save Settings" routine only, they are added upon closure even if Save Settings is not enabled. This applies to almost any of the 'Customise...' items, including user-commands, colour-coding, filtering, etc.

...searching for the name of the filter I'd just created and wanted to delete.

As illogical as it seems, the proper way to remove filters is to open the filter in the definition dialog, and remove all details from it (name-matching, sub-rules, etc) except the predefined name and then save it again - that will remove it from the list. Nikos seems to have a penchant for casuistic-logic and a fear of simple oft-requested "Remove" buttons.

[nikos]

it's not as hard as you make it sound, first press CLEAR then type in the filter name then "save" will do a delete
another way is to overwrite the filter with a modified definition

[Kilmatead]

It's really really hard! My brain does not think backwards like yours does, so the idea of "saving a blank filter" as being the equivalent of "delete this filter" doesn't even dawn on me. I've been using this silly thing for years and every bloody time I want to remove a filter I have to stop, think about it, search the PDF, and finally just give up and delete it from the registry manually.

I have wasted aeons of my life because of this. I will never get those aeons back. It's worse than a bad film or a broken heart, it's total dissolution of a human soul for want of a simple "Delete" button!

(See, you always think I'm joking when I question your understanding of simple logic, but it really is mind-blowingly weird how you come up with these anti-human methods of GUI interaction. It's actually interesting from an anthropological point of view because you are oddly consistent about doing it, which is either a sign that one of us has brain-damage from being dropped on our heads as a child one too many times, or you're just living in an alternate universe. Granted, Slovakia may seem like an alternate universe, but this has been going on since long before that fall from democratic grace.)

[nikos]

are you a power user that spreads wisdom to others? how didn't you spot the "clue" about deleting in the popup help text over this text field?

that dialog already has tons of buttons, no need to put more

[Kilmatead]

Who the heck uses/reads dialog balloon help? I switched that off decades ago. And you just don't want to modify it because it's one of those funky "shared" resource dialogs (like <Ctrl+F>) which get really messy when you switch things around (even I know that).

So no hiding behind some silly yokel excuse like "too many buttons already" - call it for what it is - fear! I know, I'll suggest this to MS for Windows 9 - to delete a file, you must first save it with 0 content. Oh, wait, doesn't WinAPI RemoveDirectory already work that way? You and Bill must be hunting buddies...

Power user? Wisdom? I'm just the gardener...

[dunno]

Found them myself - they're now under HKCU\Software\ZabaraKatranemia Plc\xplorer2_UC.global\Hyper filters

Thanks for that.
In a moment of boredom, or was it madness, I fiddled with creating a custom search filter to display modified files/folders within the last day. After much tweaking and grabbing and poking around I managed to create something with a button, boy was I proud, until I discovered that nothing would appear in a general search for a specific item in any disk let alone a directory where I know such a file exists, 'hrummph', eventually I discovered that my custom filter was now the default for every search, how silly of me to think that the filter thingy would automatically revert to default after a custom search. The fun part was that I spent hours trying to figure out how to restore the search thingy so that it would do a normal general search all the time.

I can finally rest in peace now that I know how to clean the registry to prevent custom search fields from appearing.

*climbs back into hammock with a large rum* and on the 7th day man must drink.