OffLine’s Menus

OffLine’s primary functions are easily accessed from the File menu.

The New… command creates and opens a new (empty) catalog.

The Open… command opens an existing catalog (after closing the current catalog). The next time you launch OffLine, the last catalog you opened will be opened automatically.

The Catalog… command opens the Catalog dialog box. Choose this command whenever you want to add new disks to your catalog.

The Statistics… command displays summary information about the contents of the current catalog.

The Export… command is used to extract the information from the catalog and save it in a format suitable for use with other applications, such as word processors, spreadsheets, and database management systems. See Exporting the Catalog, below.

Pack catalog performs two functions. First, it rebuilds the active catalog, physically removing any entries that have been marked for deletion. Second, it checks the catalog structure for integrity, and attempts to repair any damage that may have occurred.

Duplicates… is a powerful command that you’ll probably use only occasionally. Its purpose is to scan the entire catalog (or a selected disk in the catalog) for ﬁles that exist in more than one place. This information is recorded in a text ﬁle that you may peruse and print using TeachText or your word processing application (see Export preferences below). The report includes each ﬁle’s creation and modiﬁcation dates, so you can easily determine which of the duplicates are more recent. Using this information, you may wish to “clean up” your disks, by throwing away redundant or obsolete copies of duplicated ﬁles.

Normally, the entire catalog is searched for duplicates. However, if you select a disk from the Disk List and check “Selected disk only,” then only the selected disk will be searched for duplicates.

You can control the behavior of the Duplicates command by choosing Duplicates preferences… from the Edit menu.

The radio buttons determine how rigorous the search will be. If you pick “Names, types and creators,” then ﬁles will be considered duplicated only if they have the same name, they are the same type of document, and they were created by the same application. If you pick “Names match,” then ﬁles with the same name will be considered duplicates.
Check “Sizes match” if you want ﬁles to be considered as possible duplicates only if they are the same size.

Check “Don’t look inside archives” if you do not want the search for duplicates to include components of compressed archives.

Page Setup… displays the standard dialog box for your printer. For label printing, you should select portrait orientation and 100 percent scaling. If the dialog box has a button labeled “Options,” you should click on it, and check the box marked “Larger print area.”

Choose Print Labels… to select disks from the catalog for which you want to print labels. See the next section, ”Printing Floppy Disk Labels.”

Quit ends the session and returns you to the Finder.