CNET Editors' review
Useful File Utilities is a basic file management program that allows users to perform a variety of functions to keep their files organized. Although the program contains helpful tools, it's not entirely intuitive.
The program's main features are organized into five tabs: Browser, Finder, Renamer, Replacer, and Batch Replacer. All of these are fairly self-explanatory, and work as one would probably expect. The browser option has a two-pane display, allowing users to browse to different locations on their machines and move files between the two. The browser also contains what the program calls a basket drive, which allows users to create a list of links to files; we didn't fully understand this feature, and found the program's Help file to be somewhat poorly written and unhelpful. Overall, we found that the program contained many features that are common to similar file management programs, and those features were fairly intuitive and worked well. The features that were less common, such as the basket drive and a poorly explained plug-in capability, were not intuitive or well-described, rendering them not particularly useful. This places Useful File Utilities solidly in the "average" category; it works fine, but there's nothing outstanding about it and there are many similar programs available.
Useful File Utilities is free to try but has a nag screen in the trial version. It comes as a ZIP file but installs and uninstalls without issues. We recommend this program with reservations; it's worth trying, but there are better options available.
Publisher's Description
From ReplSoft:
This is a file browser with a replacer, a renamer, a finder, a change-attributes function and a batch replacer. The batch replacer is a multi-string search-and-replace filter. It can find strings in files and replace them with whatever text you specify. Both text and binary files can be processed by the program.
What's new in this version: Version 3.7 has added ability to specify favorite directories.
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All versions:
2.6 starsout of 6 votes
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Results 1-4 of 4
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"High price, unclear usage texts"
Version: Useful File Utilities 2.8
Pros
Seems an own installer which got an uninstaller as well. It seems you have the possibility to use other languages as well. But I think the replacer and renamer functions are the features why you might decide on buying this product.
Cons
You can't use Ctrl or Shift to select multiply files. It comes to my attention that it shows you the date with double points ':'. It doesn't matter what system settings you have, it'll show something like '21:06:2006' if you want to change the attribute, funy.
For the very first look i thought i accidently opened Total Commander then i've realized all the differences.
There's a virtual max usage number, the setup sad, however, the application itself won't count (won't show you) how much opening passed until now. When the counter passed the number, it'll tell you "Time is finished, I should definetttly buy it!" (However, it'll let you open the program.) For 40$? That's too much.
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"Helped me solve an annoying problem"
Version: Useful File Utilities 2.6
Pros
UFU may not look like much, but the "Change Attributes" plug-in helped me recover a whole folder of files that my other utilites could not see. The files had somehow become hidden, but UFU found them and allowed me to easily change them all back to being visible. "Make List" plugin is nice for making a text file of folder contents. Glad I found it.
Cons
Interface not elegant, and multi-file selection sort of non-standard.
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"Slow, buggy, and with subpar components"
Version: Useful File Utilities 2.2
Pros
Let's not go here.
Cons
VERY slow at opening folders with thousands of files, and all its component applets are just awful. Throw in terrible interface and you've got a turkey of an app.
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"I find it very useful and well worth the cost."
Version: Useful File Utilities 2.1
Pros
Great! It quickly and easily replaced 5 different strings of text in about 20 different files. This is a useful program. It can replace multiple strings in multiple files very quickly in one step. You just select the files and make a list of "find and replace" strings, then click Start. It even gives you a status window while it's running. The file browser could use a little work, but I have had no problems with it and it has really helped speed up my work. I recommend this highly. Great job, "ReplSoft"!!
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