A couple of features i would like to see for ease of use

[DawnTreader]

Hello

Hopefully this is the place for this.

I am working on creating a profile that backs up the user files that are on my mother’s system.

I want a way to filter to just have things like office documents, pictures, music files and videos that are created by my parents.

I don’t want to save anything that would be reinstalled if I were to do an OS reinstall of their computers.

the problem is if I check the users folder I end up with all the system junk that is stored in their profile folders and it takes up more space than I have to backup to.

I could sit here and type in *\*.docx, *\*.doc, *\*.dot, *\*.xlsx, etc till I am blue in the face...

Is there some way to import a list that maybe someone else has already created? And has someone already created that list?

better yet would be a if the program had the feature to just know the normal / average user files that are important to people that are not system files and it would be as easy as telling it to only backup the "user files". This would be separate from backing up the user "settings" files or system files.

I guess you would have to have some way of fine tuning this, but that would be as easy as having a prompt for files that are outside of the users folders and asking "the program found such and such a file outside of the normal user folders, do you want to include it?" people would recognize files that are not in the normal user folders because they put it somewhere on purpose.

Does this make any sense? Wouldn’t a feature like this be helpful?

[Dave Wilkins]

Given that this is a feature request, not "ideas for new products or discuss things that are not related to 2BrightSparks products" (as it says 'above the door' of this section), not really. Unfortunately you haven't said which product you are using (we have three backup products), so it's hard to decide where to move it

In any case, yes, it would be wonderful (as would the psychic version...), except that there is likely no such animal as the 'normal/average user', some people want their settings backed up as well as their data (some don't), too many data-types, too much different software - some using bespoke or configurable locations, too many versions of Windows (that can be re-configured...)

We did look into this in depth some time ago and decided it would be too much work for too few increased sales (plus, too many support tickets asking why we missed stuff in weird places) - and the fact there would be no perfect solution. In short, a slippery slope we decided not to go down. Nor do we plan to get into a debate about it, sorry.

If you check out other software for similar features, you'll maybe get an idea how easy this isn't

[DawnTreader]

Wow.

First sorry, I didn’t realise that there more than one backup program that you guys made. I guess the words backup don’t point to a specific version of syncback...

Ok. given there are a lot of different users and configurations I am talking about people who use their computer for email, pictures, writing, some graphs, videos, maybe a little gaming and just need a system that makes it easy to find their files and back them up.

Why can't you just "database" a list of extensions that are labeled as "user", "system" or "settings"? And then use that for the basis of selecting files. I don't care where the files are, do the whole selected drive. Then it would be up to the user to take care of the "unusual" or "exceptions" to the rule.

At least having a system that makes it quicker and easier than me having to type in long list of extensions would be nice.

And I guess I should have just read the part about not getting into a debate about it.

Whatever happened to innovation and thinking outside the box? Don't bother responding... I will take my search for the answers elsewhere.