Exclude directory pattern

Scherub, welcome to these user forums.

The exclusions for a Files & Folders backup will only allow you to exclude files by wildcard & mask, you cannot specify folders to be excluded in this way.

To achieve this sub-folder exclusion, you would need to select the parent Development folder for your three Project folders in the Source panel, then deselect the sub-folders for each of the Project folders in the right-hand selection panel.  See the attached screen shots that shows this.

Hi Steve,

thank you for your quick reply.

Using your described 'technique' is something I tried to avoid as it would also be extremely cumbersome. This would mean I would have to adjust the excluded directories every day or at least every few days. To be honest I would have expected that a professional and mature backup tool like this would allow to exclude folders by a pattern rather than to specify the absolute path.

Anyway, thanks for you answer again. I'm probably going to refund it.

Scherub wrote:

Now I would like to exclude the 'obj' and 'bin' directories but unfortunately ATI2017 doesn't like the patterns I've tried so far, such as '*\obj\*'. For some reason it accepts '*/obj/*' but I'm not sure whether this would work or not. Can anyone give me an advice how to solve this, please?

I needed to do this for a similar task and if i translate it to your situation you can solve it like this:
1. Select the folder Projects (or Development ) to take a backup of that folder and all it´s subfolders.
2. Go to the Exlusions tab.
3. Click the plus sign.
4. Type *obj*
5. repeat step #3.
6. Type *bin*

Result:
The folder Projects and all it´s content and subfolders will be backed up while all folders named obj and bin will be excluded from the backup.

This works for me when i want to take backup of a folder and it´s subfolders but at the same time exclude certain folders and all it´s contents.

Hi Roger,

thank you for your advice. Unfortunaly your method would also exclude all files containing a 'bin' or 'obj' which is not what I want. It would even exclude the 'binaries' folder which should be part of the backup.

If the files in your bin and obj folders have unique file extensions that are not found in the parent Project directories, you could just exclude those files by *.extension for each of the unique extensions.

I would recommend submitting Feedback on this requirement for being able to specify Folders to be excluded for a Files & Folders backup scheme.

Scherub wrote:

thank you for your advice. Unfortunaly your method would also exclude all files containing a 'bin' or 'obj' which is not what I want. It would even exclude the 'binaries' folder which should be part of the backup.

Interseting, you are absolutely right and i was not aware of that folders and files were excluded when using this variant. I did a test here using your folder names and found out the very same thing, the 'binaries' folder and files containing 'bin' in the file name are excluded.

I did some more tests but did not find a solution.

@Steve: Unfortunately using file extensions will also not suit my needs as it would also exclude some files outside these directories. The given directory structure was also just a simplifed example. I have a lot more projects than that and branching projects will also increase the number of these example directories by a good number. So right now I would probably have to exclude 100 directories or so manually which is not something I'm going to do. And as I mentioned I would have to edit the exclude settings on a nearly daily basis.

Do you have a link where I can submit feedback on this requirement? The next problem is that it would probably take them months to implement it.

Unfortunately the 14 days limit that I can return the software runs out very soon.

Scherub, you can use the Feedback tool which can be found within the ATIH GUI in the Help section (?) icon.

On the web this can be found at http://www.acronis.com/en-gb/support/feedback.html (or your own local in country page from the Support site).

Thanks, I've used the application to send them some feedback.

what about

development*obj*

or

development\*obj*

Alternativley, do a file/folder backup.  Select the entire Development folder.  Uncheck each of the obj and bin folder underneath that in the GUI - that should be pretty easy to do.  You'll have to go in and remove additional checkmarks if you create more subdirectories with similar names though.