FoldMonkey will sort, organize, archive and make backup copies of files and folders instead of you.

It can't be denied: sometimes our computers are in such a mess, we can hardly thread our ways through piles of odd folders and files. And it is not mentioning copies of God knows when and what for done documents, and puzzles of file names arousing quite obscure remembrances. Those who deal with numerous series of similar images and documents do understand me.

The situation is everlasting as we hurry to save contents and do not have time to structure and organize files right at the moment, but will do it just…later. Later most of such files and copies are deleted in the gross.

One of the ways out is to organize a process which will organize our newly created files instead of us. FoldMonkey is the program suitable for the purpose. It sorts, organizes, archives and makes backup copies of files and folders.

FoldMonkey is a one page program. All we have to do is to fill out spaces and check boxes of the Settings Window.

It's up to you either to scan the target folder once only, or to monitor it for new/incoming files at a specific time or every user-defined interval. The interval extends from 1 second up to 99 hours. Additional options like Start on System StartUp, or Start Scanning When Launched help adjust FoldMonkey to suit your tasks and lifestyle.

Choose the folder to monitor, and decide how to treat sub-folders. It's important. A small but a fly in the ointment is the absence of choice to include/exclude some particular sub-folders. You either rename files from all subfolders or none. Take it into consideration, as there is no Undo Renaming option available.

Then develop a New File Names pattern to rename files to match specific criteria. Add Text option gives us some tags: old file name, old file extension along with the counter and dates of files creation, access, modification, etc. We are also welcome to enter a custom text.

For example: monkeytrial<oldFileExtension><Date:File Modified:yyyyddmo><counter> It might seem long, complicated and unclear for an uninitiated person. But it contains as much information as its owner can comprehend. Actually, it will look something like monkeytrialjpg200515090.

We can stop here or archive new files: move or copy them into an existing or newly created directory. Some of users may need such copies, but as far as FoldMonkey does not allow backup them to CD or other removable devices, I am not interested in this option.

What is convenient is the opportunity to set up FoldMonkey to run as a service or multiple separate services. To create a service, just click the button at the bottom of the Settings Window and name it. This service options allows monitoring several folders with different settings.

The final option is the Launch Program check box. It sets the program launching options. You can use this section to launch 3rd party programs or custom scripts each time a new file is found.

In general, FoldMonkey is a rather helpful program. Running all day long, it will occupy about 5M of your CPU memory. As for the range of options, it might be wider. But functionality is always a hostage of simplicity. The way to receive auto-help (tool-tips) seems very convenient, but the idea to get Help section online only is somewhat taking aback.

Summing up the program's advantages and weak points, I would say FoldMonkey is overpriced…at the present stage of development.

FoldMonkey keywords: monitor, folder, rename, move, file, files, folders, incoming, directory, directories, create, date, sort