To decide what will be processed with an Action, you need to define how your files and folders will be filtered by DropIt. You can do it defining some Rules and some Additional Filters for your Association.

DropIt offers several filters for your files and folders:

• in the “Rules” field you have to define one or more filters by filename and/or path;
• from the “Rule Settings” button (the “blue i”) you find some examples and you can define to consider Rules as Regular Expressions (for advanced users);
• from the “Additional Filters” button (the “gray funnel”) you can also configure to filter files and folders by their properties, attributes and content.

Files and folders that will match with the filters of an Association, will be processed with the related Action during the process.

Each file and folder on your hard drive has a path that defines “where it is”. Something like this:
C:\Example\Of\Directory\File.jpg

DropIt allows to “decide what process with an action” checking paths. In Rules field you can define to detect files and folders by their:

• location (C:\Example\Of\Directory\File.jpg)
• name (C:\Example\Of\Directory\File.jpg)
• extension (C:\Example\Of\Directory\File.jpg)

Basically you need to type the path of files/folders you want to consider, using asterisks to say “this part can be anything”. You can use single asterisks * to detect files, for example:

• *.jpg means “consider files from any location (because not defined), with any name (because of the asterisk), with jpg extension (JPG or Jpg are the same, because Rules are case insensitive)”
• penguin* means “consider files from any location, with name that begins with penguin (because asterisk is only after), with any extension (or also without extension, because not defined)”
• *rose* means “consider files from any location, with name that contains rose (the asterisk means zero or more characters, so also rose or roses or 10_rose are considered), with any extension”
• C:\Folder\*.jpg means “consider files from C:\Folder directory, with any name, with jpg extension”
• C:\*\Photos\* means “consider files contained in Photos folder from any C:\ subdirectory, with any name and any extension”

Or double asterisks ** to detect folders, for example:

• images** means “consider folders from any location, with name that begins with images”
• **temp** means “consider folders from any location, with name that contains temp”
• C:\**docs means “consider folders from C:\ directory, with name that ends with docs”
• C:\**\Photos\** means “consider folders contained in Photos folder from any C:\ subdirectory, with any name”

If you want to use more Rules in the same association, you can separate them with ; or | characters. For example:

• *.jpg;*.png means “consider files with jpg or png extension”
• sea**|mountain** means “consider folders with name that begins with sea or mountain”
• *fly*;**fly** means “consider files and folders with name that contains fly (yes, you can also create associations for both files and folders)”

If you need to exclude some files or folders from the matching, you can use / character. As you can see in the following examples, after each rule you have to define its own exclusions. For example:

• *.jpg/sea* means “consider files with jpg extension, except files with name that begins with sea”
• **docs**/**temp** means “consider folders with name that contains docs, except folders with name that contains also temp”
• *.jpg/sea*/wind*;*.png/fly* means “consider jpg files except if begin with sea or wind, and consider png files except if begin with fly”

Sometimes you may need to create general associations to process all dropped files and folders; other times you may need to process them only if there are no other actions to be performed. In these cases you can use the following special Rules:

• * means “consider all files”
• ** means “consider all folders”
• *;** means “consider all files and folders”
• # means “consider all files that do not have other matches”
• ## means “consider all folders that do not have other matches”
• #;## means “consider all files and folders that do not have other matches”

If you want, you can also use Abbreviations in Rules. For more info about them you can read this page:
How to customize destinations

Finally, if you are an advanced user, you can enable a feature to consider Rules as Regular Expressions (instead of use the previously described syntax). You can do it for the desired associations from “Rule Settings” button. You can find more info about this alternative syntax here:
http://www.autoitscript.com/autoit3/docs/functions/StringRegExp.htm

These filters allow you to refine your associations, to process only the desired files and folders with the related Action. The first group of additional filters is “Properties”, to filter by:

• Size to “consider only files and folders that are more, less or equal to a defined size”
• Date Modified to “consider only files and folders modified more, less or at the same defined time”
• Date Created to “consider only files and folders created more, less or at the same defined time”
• Date Opened to “consider only files and folders opened more, less or at the same defined time”

The second group is “Attributes”, to filter files and folders with or without these attributes:

• Archive to “consider only files and folders with or without Archive attribute”
• Hidden to “consider only files and folders with or without Hidden attribute”
• Read-Only to “consider only files and folders with or without Read-Only attribute”
• System to “consider only files and folders with or without System attribute”
• Temporary to “consider only files and folders with or without Temporary attribute”

The third group is “Others”, to filter files and folders by:

• Included Files to “consider only folders that contain the defined list of files (you can define filenames and use asterisks, typing for example *.jpg;*.png or img*.jpg or house*.*)”
• File Content to “consider only files that contain the defined strings (you can decide if consider typed text as Each word separately, Literal string, or Literal string and case sensitive)”