Scanning

Scanning

A scan only plans — nothing is moved until you press Organize. The Preview tab shows every planned move; the Log tab shows notes and warnings.

Options (sidebar → Scan)

Option	Default	Meaning
Scan subdirectories	off	Also organise files in sub-folders (recursive scan)
Include hidden files	off	Also move dot-files and files with the Windows Hidden attribute
Use sub-categories	off	Sort into sub-folders such as Images/Photos — see Categories and File Types
Max depth	5 (1–50)	How many folder levels a recursive scan goes down
Max folders	10 000 (100–500 000)	The scan stops after this many folders
Timeout	30 s (5–300 s)	Time limit for collecting files

Values outside the allowed range are corrected automatically; an empty field falls back to the last valid value. All options are remembered.

Changing an option after a scan clears the preview (the limits only for recursive scans) — scan again, so Organize never uses an outdated plan.

If the scanned folder is itself named like a category (e.g. Downloads/Images), its files of that category are already in place — nothing is moved to Images/Images. Sub-categories go directly below it (Images/Photos).

Recursive scans

With Scan subdirectories, files from all sub-folders are moved into the category folders at the top of the scanned folder (e.g. Projects/old/photo.jpg → Images/photo.jpg). Keep that in mind for folders whose structure you want to keep.

A recursive scan never enters:

• the category folders directly inside the scanned folder (Images, Documents, …) — they hold already organised files;
• the target folders of your enabled Rules (since v3.5.1) — for the same reason;
• Git repositories (folders containing .git) — they are left alone as a whole;
• .git, .cache, .local, node_modules;
• symbolic links and Windows junctions;
• hidden or system folders such as $RECYCLE.BIN (hidden folders only with Include hidden files);
• /proc and /sys on Linux;
• Simple Organizer's own data folders.

If a limit (depth, folder count, timeout) stops the scan, the log says so — files in the remaining folders are simply not part of this run.

Unusual folders

Scanning one of these folders asks for confirmation first:

• the root of a drive (C:\, /)
• your home folder, or the folder holding all home folders (C:\Users, /home)
• system and program folders (C:\Windows, Program Files, /usr, …)
• folders where programs keep settings (AppData, .config, .local, .cache)
• Git repositories

Your answer is remembered for that folder — also for Auto-Organize.

Folders that are never organised

Simple Organizer refuses to scan its own settings, history and staging folders (see Data and Settings) and, when run from source, its program folder. The folder that merely contains simple_organizer.exe is organised normally — only the exe itself is skipped.

Large folders

Scans of tens of thousands of files work: progress updates are throttled and the Preview and Duplicates tabs are filled in small slices, so the window stays responsive.