Instructions

Starting up

To launch FolderGuard, simply doubleclick its icon. If you're starting up FolderGuard for the first time, you will see the Setup dialog that will help you to set your FolderGuard preferences.

During the setup, you will be prompted to define an "owner" class password, the administration level user's password. Do not forget this password. Use it with the username 'Administrator'. The Administrator has access privileges to all preference and setup dialogs.

During the setup phase, you can also add normal level users who don't have access to setup screens or other users' folders. This is good for multi-user environments.

Notes to Administrator/Owner

• The default user is named ‘Administrator’ (without the quotes). The Administrator is the only user with access to setup panels.

• The Administrator user name should be used with the root level password - the default password you set in the Setup Assistant.

• New users are automatically set to “Regular user” status, and have no access privileges to other persons’ folder lists or setup panels.

• Regular user passwords can only be edited by the Administrator, using the User Manager window.

Managing folders

Once you've entered your password the Folder Visibility Manager will appear. This is the main window of FolderGuard. The Visibility Manager window allows you to add more folders to your folder list, remove folders from the list (but not from your disk(s), only from the saved list that FolderGuard uses) and toggle the folder list's folders' visibility. You can make single folders visible or invisible or hide or reveal all of the folders in the folder list.

To add a new folder into the list, click "Add folder to list". This will open a folder selection window. Use it to locate your folder, and click "Select". Your folder will now appear in the folder list. Folders can also be added by dropping them into the window from the Finder. Multiple folders can be dropped simultaneously.

To make the folder invisible, click "Toggle Visibility". To make it visible again, press the Toggle button again. Invisible folders are marked with the italic text style in the list.

To remove a folder from the list (but not from your disk, only from the FolderGuard folder listing) click "Remove folder from list".

You can view a folder's contents by double-clicking its name in the Manager window, or by selecting it and selecting "Folder Contents" from the "File" menu.

Folder Visibility Toggling, by default, is set to "Recursive Hiding". Recursive Hiding means that all of the items in the hidden folders will be hidden as well. This is slower but more secure than standard hiding. To change this setting, press the button labeled "Preferences" and uncheck the checkbox in that window. This setting will be saved once you press "OK" in the Preferences dialog.

You can also enter the Change Password dialog from the Preferences dialog by pressing "Change Password". Note that regular user passwords can only be changed by the Administrator from the Preferences >> Manage Users panel.

NOTE: The 'Make all visible' and 'Make all invisible' features are always recursive to prevent the user from accidentally making some items visible and some items invisible in all of the active folders in the folder list.

NOTE: It's not recommended to use both Recursive and Standard hiding. If you do use them both, make sure not to first recursively hide an entire folder along with its items and then use standard revealing to only reveal the folder. If you do this, only the folder will be revealed and its contents will remain hidden.

NOTE: If FolderGuard reports a NilObjectException Error at launch, locate the folder "FolderGuard2 Prefs" in your preferences folder, open it and drag all of the files there to the trash. [*2.0]

WARNING: Making your hard drives or other storage devices invisible is definitely not recommended, especially if you have enabled Recursive Hiding. Hiding entire storage volumes takes a lot of time and if Recursive Hiding is enabled, any files or programs, perhaps even the active System, might start behaving strangely. The active items on the selected disk might stop working or be permanently lost.

WARNING: Never make the folder that FolderGuard is in invisible. Making the FolderGuard folder invisible might cause your hidden folders and files to be permanently lost.

WARNING: Removing a folder that is currently invisible from FolderGuard's Visibility Manager list is - especially if it has been hidden with Recursive Hiding - not recommended. Invisible folders that are removed from the list cannot be re-added to the list unless they are made visible with a resource editor or some other tool that can handle visibility flagging.

Changing the password

To change your FolderGuard password, first select Preferences... from the Edit menu to invoke the Preference panel. Then click "Change Password" in the Preference window to open the Change Password dialog. Enter your current ("old") password into the top-most field and next the new password into the second and third fields. The retyping is required to make sure that you have entered the correct password, the one you had in mind. This pactically eliminates the chance of you pressing a wrong key and the wrong moment and causing FolderGuard to save a wrong password.

You can also disable the password protection by disabling the feature in the preferences. 

NOTE: If you set the password to be "" (blank), you will still be prompted for a password at application startup. The password field must be left blank in these situations. If you want to disable the password protection, uncheck the "Prompt for password at startup" checkbox in the preferences.

Recovering "lost" folders

If you accidentally make the FolderGuard folder invisible, or if a folder won't become visible by making it visible in FolderGuard, follow these steps to make it visible again:

1. Launch FolderGuard
2. Select 'Mass Reveal Folders' from the 'File' menu.
3. Select the folder in which the invisible files/folders are located.
4. Click "Mass Reveal".
5. All files and folders inside the selected folder will be visible again.