ExpPrint allows you to easily view, print, and save listings of files and folders, their properties and tags/metadata.
Listings can be viewed in a detailed layout format with a number of properties per row, or in a concise multi-column layout showing just the file name.
Detailed listings can be sorted by any property (name, size, type, date, version, etc.), and are highly configurable in both content and style. You can create your own custom settings and save as many as you want.
You can create listings containing:
Listings can include the following file information:
Additionally, many other properties, tags, and metadata for various file types can be listed:
ExpPrint's architecture is based on flexible XML data formats and is customisable by anyone familiar with current web technologies (CSS and XSLT). Additionally, if you have special requirements, custom plug-in viewer extensions can be written in a .NET programming language (C#, Visual Basic, etc.).
If you'd like to customise the appearance in some way, but don't feel able to do it yourself, let us know what you'd like to do and we'll try to help you. If your suggestions are generally useful we'll try to incorporate them in future versions.
While V5 looks like its predecessor, we have rewritten its core and greatly extending the file and folder information that you can list.
For the complete list of what's new, changed, and fixed, see the revision history page.
1 Please note that the new media/document metadata features only work on Windows Vista, Windows 7, and later Windows operating systems.
2 Some Explorer shell extensions do not fully support browsing, or provide only partial support for the properties available through them. For example, the current .NET Global Assembly Cache (GAC), (normally c:\windows\assembly) folder is not listed as it is shown in Windows Explorer.
Expand the zip file to a directory on your machine and run the setup program. If you've not got some of the necessary components installed (Windows Installer, .NET Framework V2), the installation should prompt you to download and install them. Once these are installed, the ExpPrint installation will continue.
Follow the on-screen instructions to complete the installation.
The last step of Setup informs you that ExpPrint is installed and briefly tells you how to use it.
If you're upgrading an existing version, you should log off and back on again to ensure that Windows Explorer has unloaded the previous version. If you don't, you may be surprised to find that you still have the previous version when you start it.
You need to run the installation from an account with Administrator privileges - on newer operating systems such as Windows Vista, Windows 7, or Windows Server 2008, you should be prompted to elevate the installation to run with Administrator permissions.
If an administrator applies the EnforceShellExtensionSecurity policy to limit the use of shell extensions to approved ones, they will need to add ExpPrint to that list in the registry:
Create a REG_SZ value whose name is "{81A64FE0-7101-11cf-8731-444553540000}" under the HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Shell Extensions\Approved branch.
The installer supports the MSI administrative installation options.
For example:
msiexec /jm expprint.msi
"Advertises" ExpPrint on all the machine's users Programs menu items. When a user invokes the Start->Programs->JD Design->ExpPrint->ExpPrint Documentation option, the installation of ExpPrint will complete.
or:
msiexec /a expprint.msi
Performs an "administrative" installation to a shared network location.
ExpPrint setup installs files to the following directories:
| %ProgramFiles%\JD Design\ExpPrint | The main installation directory Contains the core program files |
| ...\Plugins | The plug-in's directory Contains the viewer plug-in components, and the XSLT and CSS style sheets |
| ...\doc | The documentation directory Contains this document and related image files |
Setup will also add relevant registry entries and Start menu items.
Any user settings for the Detail Table format are stored in the user's (My) Documents\ExpPrint folder.
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If you want to use the default options (or the last saved settings), just click the "Create..." button.
The text in the Document Title field will appear as the document title when you preview or print the listing. If you want something other than the default generated title, change it before pressing the Create button.
If you want to save a listing data file (its contents are XML data), make sure that you specify a unique file name as there is no warning that an existing file will be overwritten.
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ExpPrint can calculate hash values for file contents using several popular algorithms: Crc32, MD5, and SHA-1.
Hash values are commonly used for file verification purposes - you may encounter their use as a means of checking that downloaded files haven't been corrupted.
Note that ExpPrint has to read each file in full in order to calculate these values. Including these options can greatly slow down the listing generation, particularly when the file is large and/or if the file is on slow networked or cloud storage.
With this option off, ExpPrint records the same set of file attributes that Windows Explorer normally shows. With this option on, it records several others.
ExpPrint can obtain the file owner, and for file types that have it, version information. These operations can be slow, so use them only if you need them.
If you want to list the contents of compressed folders (zip or cab files), or follow symbolic links to other folders, check those options.
For the purpose of gathering this data, they are arranged into the following categories: Pictures, Music, Video, and Documents.
Some properties are available for multiple categories; for example, the Date Acquired property is often available for picture, music, and video files, whereas others such as Beats Per Minute only apply to music files. ExpPrint caters for this and collects the common properties for each appropriate option.
Once the listing file has been created, the listing viewer is started automatically.
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Additional custom layout formats can be developed using XSLT - please contact us if this is of interest to you. |
Here you can select which layout format you want to use.
In an installation with no custom plug–in viewers there are 2 options, "Detailed Table", and "Multi-Column". Select the one you want in the list and then press the "Next..." button.
The main viewer window displays a sample image and text explanation of the type of listing that the selected layout format will produce. While the sample is a real example, it is only a static image and can not reflect the range of options that you can use.
If you almost exclusively use one layout style you can bypass this step by selecting the layout format in the list and using the "Set Default Format" button. The next time you create a listing, this step will be automatically skipped.
If you want to clear or change the default, start the ExpPrint Viewer manually and change the setting, or use the "Clear Default Format" button.
You can run the ExpPrint Viewer at any time to re-display any previously saved listing file. Start it from the Programs, JD Design, ExpPrint, ExpPrint Viewer menu item.
The 2 options produce different layout formats:
A tabular format such as the example below:
Each row contains the name and properties of a file or folder, along with each folder total summary.
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This is a simple presentation of the folder and file names (no size, timestamps, or other properties) arranged in multiple columns as in the example below.
You can choose the number of columns.
If you chose Multi-Column in the previous step, see here for the Multi-Column dialog.
If you chose Detailed Table in the previous step, you'll now see:
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The controls on the main part of this dialog allow you to:
The options are grouped into several tabbed pages...
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This page allows you to:
| Column | Description | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Indicator | Depending on which (Special Folder Indicators) style sheet is chosen, this column shows graphic or text indicators of the following types of folder:
If you don't want the indicators, don't select those style sheets, and/or uncheck this Indicator column. | ||||||||||||
| Name | Normally lists the display name as you see it in Windows Explorer. If you use the "Use Title for the Name column" option and the item has a Title property, the title is listed. If you use the "Show Full Path Name for" options on the "Miscellaneous" page, the full path name is used. | ||||||||||||
| Size |
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| Type | The type of file or folder as you see it in Windows Explorer. | ||||||||||||
| Modified Created Accessed | The file system timestamp values. | ||||||||||||
| Owner | The file owner. Note that if ExpPrint cannot determine an account name, it does not list the SID format as Explorer does since these are not useful to most users and would widen the listing of this column. | ||||||||||||
| Attribs | The file or folder attributes such as read-only, system, hidden, etc. | ||||||||||||
| Version | The version number for .exe, .dll, and similar files. | ||||||||||||
| Crc32 MD5 SHA-1 | Hash algorithm values - commonly used for file content verification purposes. | ||||||||||||
| Tags/metadata Properties | Many different properties that are embedded in different types of files. Hopefully their names will be self-evident. |
You can choose which columns are listed by setting the check box for the column. You need to click an item in the list once to select it, then again to toggle the check box state.
If you right click on the columns list you can add and remove the columns displayed in the list.
Note that property/column names shown in the columns list are categorised for the type of file (Photo, Music, Document, etc.). General properties do not have a category prefix.
Select the column item in the list, then use the Left (up)/Right (down) buttons to position it in the order you want. You can see the horizontal order from the yellow highlighted row above the column list.
You can sort the listing by any property in the listing by selecting the property column name in the "Sort by" list.
Note that the sorting capability is independent of which properties are displayed. So, for example, although you might not want to see the "Type" column, you can still sort by it.
The sort order is in ascending order unless you set the "Descending" check box.
You can change the listed column heading text by selecting the column name in the list, and pressing the "Edit Name..." button.
There are 3 image dimensions properties: "Image: Dimensions", "Image: Horiz. Size", and "Image: Vert. Size".
"Image: Dimensions" is usually shown as: "NNN x MMM", where NNN is the horizontal size, and MMM is the vertical size. The other 2 properties are numerical values.
If you want to list the dimensions you'll probably want to have just the "Image: Dimensions" property - however, you many want to sort the listing by either of the other size value - you don't need to list a property to be able to sort by it.
There are many properties for photographic image files, as well as other media and document files. If there are any you'd like to have listed that currently aren't available through ExpPrint, please send us an email and explain what it is you're looking for and include a little bit of background information to put your request into perspective.
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This page allows you to filter the listing by hiding:
The preview panel on the dialog shows the result of each option as you check them.
The following diagram illustrates the sections of a listing that can be hidden using the options on this page.
1 Note that the option here to hide items with the hidden file attribute is subtly different than using the "Hidden Items - Not Displayed" style sheet. This option eliminates the hidden items from the HTML output while the "Hidden Items - Not Displayed" style sheet instructs your Internet browser to not display them. The visible result is the same, but if you import the HTML file into an application such as Excel, the non-displayed hidden items would be apparent. Additionally, if you use one of the colour style sheets that produces alternating colours, where hidden files are interspersed with non-hidden ones, the alternating colours will break due to the non-visible items.
See the Example Listing Formats for an example using the Hide Options to create a directory tree listing.
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This page allows you to:
The indent width is expressed in em units so that it scales in proportion with the font size. You can use fractional values, such as 1.5.
The preview panel will give you an illustration of the effects of these settings.
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This page allows you to:
If you want to override your default regional format, enter a suitable Windows time format (e.g. HH:mm:ss), otherwise leave this empty. If you don't want to see the time, enter a space.
If you want to override your default regional format, enter a suitable Windows date format (e.g. dd/MM/yyyy), otherwise leave this empty.
If you leave this setting empty, ExpPrint will use a condensed display format that shows the file size in the most applicable units for the value. For example, a file that's larger than 1GB will be shown as GB, while a file that's larger than 1KB but less than a 1MB will be shown as KB.
If you'd prefer all files to be shown with a consistent scaling, you can use a format pattern and specify the scaling. For example, if you want to show all files as KB, you can use a Size Format of "#,##0.## KB" (leave off the quotes), and set the scaling combo box to KB.
For a fuller explanation of the size formatting, see the description of the XSLT format-number function here: http://www.w3schools.com/xsl/func_formatnumber.asp
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This page allows you to:
If you enable these options, the Name column shows the fully qualified path name of the file or folder.
If you only want to show the top levels of a deeply nested folder structure, you can set the number of levels here. To indicate that there are further unlisted sub-folders, ExpPrint displays the folder name of the first truncated level of folders along with an indicator, however if you don't want to see these levels, just set the "Don't show limited levels" option.
The default indicator adds the text "[limited]" to the folder name. If you don't like this, you can add your own style sheet to override the default (defined in the DefaultTableBaseCss.csd style sheet file - it's the tr.NotExp item).
These options set the size of files and folders where emphasis is applied in the listing.
If you'd prefer something other than the default bold red emphasis, you can add your own style sheet to override it. The default is defined in the DefaultTableBaseCss.csd style sheet file (it's the tr.Hi item).
On the Hide Options page, if you hide the following items:
You can create folder "tree" listings like this. |  |
Music/CD listings often show the tracks with the following information:
| Track Number | Track Title | Track Time |
This is easy to do with ExpPrint.
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You'll get a listing something like this:
Don't forget, once you've got the settings how you like them, use the "Save Settings..." button to save these settings. Thereafter you can quickly get them back from the "Open Settings" list.
If you chose Multi-Column in step 2, you'll now see:
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The multi-column options are:
Note that you can select any combination of style sheets, however you should only select one of each category as the last one will override any prior ones.
Classic mode is now deprecated and not available by default. Please contact us by email if you need to enable this mode.
The classic ExpPrint dialog box lets you configure a single default set of settings. Note that an unregistered version does not let you save or restore any settings, and prints an evaluation banner on the page footer.
A common use of this mode was to output listings to plain text files for import into other applications such as Microsoft Excel. As most modern applications support HTML well, you can often select the new HTML listing in your web browser, use your browser's Copy to clipboard facility, and then Paste the listing into the other application.
For more information see the ExpPrint pages on our web site or contact us by email.
These points only address browser suitability for use with ExpPrint.
No significant issues noticed so far that impede use with ExpPrint.
Resolves the IE8 high-order Unicode character issue.
Printing and print preview facilities are very good.
It appears to have a bug that may show up in some conditions with ExpPrint. It involves a particular HTML construction that can arise with ExpPrint in the folder total row if the folder name has a high-order Unicode character. If this situation occurs, the whole listing doesn't appear! Given the obscurity of the character range involved I don't think this will occur very often though, I only hit on it by chance in testing.
The print preview can take quite a while to generate if the document is more than a few pages long.
If you want to print with background colours you may need to alter the setting in: Tools, Internet Options, Advanced, then in the Settings list it's: Printing, "Print background colors and images". In later versions this setting is more easily accessible on the Page Setup dialog.
Doesn't support the formatting facilities that are used by ExpPrint's "Special Folder Indicators" style sheets. Consequently there are no indicators for zip, symbolic links, or shared folders, or the [] & {} bracketing of symbolic links and zip folder size values, however they are still differentiated by the same colour differences when you use the colour style sheets.
There's a minor bug in Internet Explorer 7 (which is fixed in IE8) when displaying mixed language texts. If a line contains a mix of left-to-right and right-to-left language texts, at anything other than 100% zoom, the texts will overlap.
Generally fine though print preview generation is noticeably slower than IE8/9 for large documents and gives rise to appearing as though the application is hung.
Unfortunately all tested versions reproducibly crash generating a print preview for a large listing (around 100 pages). A 70 page document was OK.
Renders the listings fine, but printing still isn't as good as Internet Explorer 9. It now has headers and footers, but has the following limits:
On a positive note, it's improving with each release, and it didn't show any problems with extremely large listings.
Much faster to generate a print preview than the other browsers, but I noticed that using Page Down in print preview stopped scrolling around half way through a document - thought the scroll bar operations were fine.
Doesn't display the graphics for the shared/images column.
Given the incorrect table layout issue and other limitations in Google Chrome, the crashing of Firefox, and the quirks experienced with Opera, Internet Explorer V8/9 provide the most capable and best output facilities for ExpPrint. For shorter listings both the current versions of Internet Explorer and Firefox seem equally capable.
We've tested ExpPrint with a couple of popular shell namespace extensions for cloud storage (Windows Live SkyDrive and Google Docs) SDExplorer (SkyDrive only) and Gladinet Cloud Desktop.
A few issues were identified with SDExplorer which to the credit of their developers were all resolved with updated versions within 24 hours of reporting the issue to them, so if you do encounter any problem using ExpPrint with SDExplorer, ensure you have the latest version of SDExplorer.
If you have any experience with other cloud storage products and ExpPrint, please let us know your findings.
The easiest way to register is by credit or debit card and one of the secure online payment facilities available from our web site.
Once you've made the payment, we'll email your registration information to you as soon as possible. Copy and paste your registered name and number into the About dialog box. You can access this dialog from the main ExpPrint dialog "Register" button. This button will change to "About" once you've completed the registration successfully. This button will change to "About" once you've completed the registration successfully.
You must enter the information exactly as it appears. The case, spaces, and punctuation of the name are significant, and the number is composed of the characters 0-9, A-F and again, the case of the letters is significant. If you register the set of utilities, be sure to use the correct registration number for each product.
You can check that registration has worked by re-displaying the About box from the main dialog. When the product is successfully registered your registration name is displayed in the About dialog rather than the entry fields.
As always, if there's something you'd like to see in a future version, don't hesitate to email us and let us know.
Use the Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs applet and choose the ExpPrint item.
We maintain a list of frequently asked questions on our web site. If you have a technical question, please check there to see if you can find an answer before contacting us by email.
We will post the latest versions of our utilities on our web site as soon as they are available, so please take a look there and subscribe to our RSS feed to keep up to date and to see what other software and services we offer.
Web Site: http://www.jddesign.co.uk/
If you have any suggestions for improvements to any of our utilities, please contact us via email (see our web site for contact information). It's always good to hear from people using our products, and we appreciate your taking the time to tell us.
Thanks
JD Design
