The Big Mean Folder Machine Organizes Macs

Most of us who frequent Mac web sites looking for the latest and greatest Mac software, tips and tricks, are not average Mac users. My private school experience administrating a few hundred Macs and PCs, for teachers and students, tells me that most computer users will point and click on what they know to work and not venture much beyond whatever is installed on their machines, Mac or PC.

In most cases, even Mac users find it difficult to keep the files on their machines organized. The Finder can be a challenge to many, let alone the abstract qualities of folder hierarchy, files, and moving both. Enter the Big Mean Folder Machine to reduce the complexity, enhance usability.

Folders And File Freedom

For those of us who live, breathe, eat, and sleep with our Macs, the Finder folder hierarchy is not much of a challenge. Not so for everyone else Macdom.

While most Mac users know to keep their files and folders in the Documents folder, and music, photos, and movies in their respective folders, anything else becomes complicated.

The Big Mean Folder Machine (hereinafter referred to as BMFM) is a Mac file and folder management utility. Most of the teachers in our school have a lot of files and folders, sometimes dozens for each class.

That means file and folder complexity, which begets opportunities for malorganization (I made it up). BMFM lets Mac users with large numbers of files and folders, move, mix, merge, match those files and folders to create an improved and more usable hierarchy.

BMFM is perfect for teachers, students, schools, administrators, and anyone who has a large and growing number of files. But it’s not limited in function to schools.

Professional File Management

Our school also has an administrative and support group, mostly Mac users. BMFM’s simple interface helps them manage very large file collections—music, audio and podcasts, instructional movies, images, photos, clip art and more.

BMFM’s interface is startling. There’s not much to it. The initial window gives users two options. Split Files into Multiple Folders, and Merge Files from Different Folders.

The next option is drag and drop. Drag and drop whatever folders you have into BMFM (or, use the folder navigation button). Who knew that managing files and folders by the thousands could get so complicated?

BMFM also handles file name conflicts and can sort files, add unique file names and more. Once files are selected, Choose a Destination Folder, then select Copy or Move Files to the Destination.

Not Your Father’s Drag & Drop

This may seem like far too many steps to simply move a few files and folders into another folder. It’s important to understand that BMFM does all the work to hundreds or thousands of files encased in many dozens of folders.

Organizing that many files is highly tedious when done by hand, via drag and drop. It’s just a few clicks in BMFM. For more control, BMFM can also split very large file collections in many multi-level folder hierarchies within seconds.

Additionally, BMFM creates folders with different attributes beyond file name. Folders can be created using file creation or modification dates, file types, file names or parts of name, even by a photo image shooting date, or audio files with specific ID3 tags.

You can even specify batches of files within a folder based on size of folder, number of files, or file size. The reverse works just as well. Pull thousands of files from many folders into a single folder (copy or move).

BMFM’s interface is straightforward and self explanatory, but I’ve found another feature that’s even easier for Mac users not accustomed to managing so many different files or folders. Droplets.

They contain specific settings and thereby automate frequent tasks for Mac users who don’t even want to both using BMFM. The Big Mean Folder Machine is a powerful utility for Mac users who deal with and manage many hundreds of folders or thousands of files.