Tips and Tricks

• You can abort a file download in the Progress window by selecting it and pressing the Del key or by right-clicking it and selecting Abort from the context menu.
  
  
• You can drag a file from the Progress window to the Task list or to a folder.
  
  
• If you click on a link with the Shift key pressed a new task will be created (works only in the built-in browser).
  
  
• You can have several project files open at the same time by launching several copies of OC.
  
  
• You can move a task from one project file to another by dragging the task from one OC window to another OC window.
  
  
• You can set or change the Depth and Filters for many tasks simultaneously by selecting several tasks and pressing the Properties button on the Task toolbar.
  
  
• You can export one or more tasks to a folder on disk by selecting the tasks and dragging them to a Windows Explorer folder.
  
  
• You can select a text on a Web page containing many links and drop the text selection to the Drop Box or directly to the Tasks list.
  
  
• The links dropped to the Drop Box are saved in the currently opened OC folder.
  
  
• OC can create a separate task for every link you click in the built-in browser. This feature is activated by holding down the Shift key when you click on a link. Starting with OC 1.6 you can set an option in the Options dialog window to do this automatically without requiring you to hold down the Shift key.
  
  
• The Drop Box has a context menu with many options. Right-click on the Drop Box to view the menu.
  
  
• You can close a tabbed window by right-clicking on its tab and selecting "Close Page" from the context menu.
  
  
• You can browse through all images downloaded by a task in the built-in browser. Select a task, click the List button on the Task toolbar. The list of all files downloaded by the task will be shown. Uncheck all non image buttons on the List toolbar to list only image files. Double-click the first item. The first image will be loaded in the built-in browser. Use down arrow on the Browser toolbar to view the next image in the list. After you will reach the end of the list the down arrow will be disabled.
  
  
• When viewing a page in the built-in browser you can load a link in the external browser (Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator) if you right-click on the link and select "Open in external browser" from the context menu.
  
  
• If you use OC as a browser, the easiest way to start with an empty project without having to create a new file every time is by using the Clear project command in the Project menu. If you want to save some pages from the old project you can copy them to another project by dragging the tasks from one OC window to another.
  
  
• If the toolbars consume too much space you can select "Docking defaults 2 (Pro)" from the View menu. To switch back to original layout select "Docking defaults 1 (Easy)". You can also customize OC by changing the layout of internal OC windows and toolbars the way you like it.
  
  
• To create a new folder, right-click in the Folders window and select New Folder from the context menu. If you right-clicked in the empty space or on the Root folder, the new folder will be created under the Root folder. If you right-clicked on another folder, the new folder will be created as a subfolder of this folder.
  
  
• You can import a list of URLs by selecting "Import Tasks" from the Task menu. Each URL must be on a separate line. You can also copy any text containing one or more URLs to the clipboard and select Paste from the context menu of the Drop Box. The Drop Box context menu is available by right-clicking the Drop Box. The Drop Box will extract all URLs from the text and will ignore the rest of the text.
  
  
• To rename a task, select it and press F2. You can also rename multiple tasks simultaneously if you select them and press the F2 key.
  
  
• You can move a task to another folder. Select one or more tasks and drag them to a folder of your choice.
  
  
• If you downloaded a big Web site you can update it without having to download the whole thing again. Offline Commander can download only the changes. To download a new version, create a new task in the same project file where the old version is stored and check the box "Download new version of the Web site". You will have the old and the new version in the same project file. OC will download only the files that changed. If you want to view the list of files that have changed, use the 'last modification date' box on the Advanced Search.
  
  
• To see if a link was not retrieved hover your mouse over the link and look at the status bar of the browser window (located at the bottom).
  
  
• When using the built-in browser, you can click on links in quick succession to queue them for download. For links clicked with the Shift key pressed, a new task will be created. Links clicked without the Shift key pressed will be placed in the browsed task (each browser has a task associated with it).
  
  
• If a project file is big you can try to compact it by selecting the Compact Database command from the Tools menu.
  
  
• You can run OC from a command line. To view all the command line options and their proper usage, run Offline Commander with the /? parameter.
  
  
• You can see the number of bytes consumed by all tasks in a folder and all of its subfolders by right-clicking on a folder and selecting Properties from the popup context menu.