The free version of the program is great for monitoring and was more than enough for my needs. In this article, I’ll walk you through setting it up and show you what it can do. Just FYI, this program does not capture the actual change in content of files, only the fact that files/folders have been modified, added, deleted, or renamed.
Choose the components you want to install and click on the Install button.
If you don’t plan on buying the program, then you can uncheck certain options like the Grid Log, Sounds, Emailer and Database plugins. Those four plugins can be purchased individually for $5 to $20 apiece inside the program.
Click on the Add button at the top right or click on Directories and then click Add.
The program offers a variety of options for monitoring directories. You can choose to monitor local or network directories. The program also offers the option to add a username and password if required. ..
Under Events, you can choose to monitor for New Files, Modifications, Deletions, Renames, and File Access. Under Options, you can choose to monitor just top level directory or all sub-directories too if you like. You can also monitor any changes to file attributes and security settings. The Pro or paid for options have a little lock next to them. Lastly, you can choose whether you want to monitor just directories, just files or both.
If you click over to Text Log, you can enable file logging and choose the output format you desire. The log file will contain the same data that you will see in the Text Log view on the main program page.
The Execute tab lets you choose to run an application whenever an event occurs. This can be handy if you want to run a command line program or script that enters the information into a database, etc. The Sounds, Emailer and Database tabs are all extra paid options if you really need them.
Once you have the folder added, you’ll see it in the top window with a green check mark. This means it is currently being monitored. Now you can test it out by adding, renaming, and modifying files and folders. You can see above that I created a new file at 5:34 called New Text Document.txt and then renamed it to New File.txt. I think modified it and accessed the file several times. ..
The free version of this program does not capture the content of the files you are editing, so you can’t see what I added to the text file, only that I modified it several times. Another limitation to the free version is that you can’t use it in the background as a Windows service unless you purchase the PRO version. This means you have to keep the app running on your computer all the time. Thankfully, you can close it and it’ll simply move to the notification area in the taskbar. ..
The other slightly annoying limitation is that you get a lot of Modified events without it showing exactly what was the cause. For example, when you open the file and save it with or without changes, you get a Modified event, which makes sense. However, if you change the permissions on the file or any property like Hidden or Read-only, you get a Modified even too. It would be more useful if it told you a permission was changed or a property of the file/folder was changed.
The program is great for letting you know when something is happening to a file or folder. It is updated frequently and new features are always being added. They also seem to listen to their customers in the forums, which makes it easy to ask questions and get help. If you know some coding, you can also write your own plugins, although you have to buy the PRO version to do that.
If you’re looking to set up monitoring for a specific purpose, we can help you out. Let us know if there are any difficulties and we’ll try to help you out.
