Filter by 'Only Exists on Left/Right'?

[Soeroah]

Hi, I'm a new user, so I'm still getting used to this software. I think it's capable of doing what I want, but what I want is a bit complicated so I'm hoping to get some help. I'll put a short version and a long version.

Short: is there a way to set up a job with a filter to hide/exclude files that only exist on the left? For my purposes these are unnecessary and just fill the list with information I don't need


Long: I have a storage folder (Storage) that contains a large volume of files. I frequently receive new files to add to it, but I use a duplicate file finder program to scan new files against the Storage folder to make sure I'm not adding the same file I've already added in the past. Over time this duplicate file finder has taken longer and longer to do its own scan, as the volume has increased.

Practically speaking, I only expect conflicts to arise in less than 40% of my files, so my solution has been to essentially copy the Storage folder to a Temporary folder, remove most of the files I don't expect to receive duplicates of, and run scans against that folder instead, to dramatically cut down on scan times. This works, but it also means if I edit metadata of a file in Temporary or Storage I also need to edit it in the other, to keep the files the same. FFS can help with this, as I've just tested - by doing an Update synchronisation, it recognised new metadata in a random file I tweaked in Storage and copied it over to Temporary. This is what I want.

However, when I do the comparison scan in FFS, it basically shows all the files that exist in Storage but not in Temporary (because I deleted them from Temporary, because I don't need to scan those with the other program. This results in the comparison window having thousands of "item only exists in left folder" results that I would rather just not see, so I can more easily see what's going to actually happen.

Is there a filter option I can add to essentially hide these files from the comparison results? I'm fairly sure as long as I use Update and not Mirror it shouldn't add any of those files to the destination folder, but I do like being able to audit with a quick look before hitting Synchronise, just to be sure.

Thanks

[Plerry]

After running a Compare, there are different icons for each of the Compare result categories.
These can be found mid below the left and right Compare results window.
(Main Dialog Overview field 11)
Hoovering your mouse over these icons ("->+", "->", "=", etc.) tells their meaning, and clicking these icons toggles the visibility of that Compare result Category.
The (in)visibility of a result Category does not affect the associated sync actions.

[xCSxXenon]

Also, using "Update" will definitely copy these files that only exist on the left to the right side. You will need to set up a custom sync and tell FFS what you want to do with that situation. For files that "only exist on the left", you would change the action to "do nothing"

[Soeroah]

Thank you very much. I think I've got it just about working how I wanted.

Bit of an unrelated question: is it possible to have FFS recognise renamed files and update the corresponding file in the backup? I'm assuming not, but if it is a feature it'd be a handy one to know how to use. Sometimes I need to add extra words to a file name in addition to just editing the metadata and I'm a bit worried that might screw with FFS's synchronisations.

[Soeroah]

Oh, I just tried it again after reloading the RTS load-with-windows program and it worked, renamed a file in the second folder when I edited it in the first.. that didn't happen earlier. Weird

[Plerry]

If you checkmark "Use database file to detect changes" in your Synchronization Settings (F8), will detect a rename of a file (or a move within a base location), during any consecutive sync; not during your first sync.