Basic Working Procedures > Managing the TOC & Topic Files > Managing topic files in the Explorer

When you are working in the Project Files section the Project Explorer is also a file manager for your topic files and the folders where they are stored. If you are working in uncompressed XML format (Professional version only, .hmxp project file) the files and folders are stored directly on your hard drive. In the compressed single-file .hmxz format the files and folders are stored inside the compressed .hmxz file.

You can use include options to "filter" the display of your topics in the TOC and Topic Files section of the Project Explorer. This makes it possible for you to see only the topics that will be included in a specific build, so that you can preview the results of specific build options without publishing your project.

1.	Apply build options to one or more topics – if you don't do this filtering will not have any effect! See Conditions and Customized Output for details.

2.	Select Explore > Filter in Project > Manage Topics and set the filter options you want to apply. The filter settings are also available from the right-click menu in the Project Explorer (Explore > Filter).

This works both in the TOC and in Topic Files. This only filters entire topics, it does not filter conditional text tagged within your topics.

The current build settings of topics are shown in the Project Explorer. Topics and chapters set to All Builds (the default) will always be included, of course – you cannot hide them.

Folders:

Select Topic Files in the Project Files section of the Project Explorer. This will initially display a list of the folders in which your topic files are stored. How many folders are displayed will depend on whether you have created sub-folders:

Files:

Select the Topics folder or any other folder in the Topic Files section:

You can sort and group files by several different criteria (name, mod status, mod date, build option, topic status color). You can combine sorting and grouping: When the files are grouped the sorting options are applied within each group.

Sorting the files:

Just left-click in the column header you want to sort by. Alternatively you can also right-click in the column header and select the sort option in the context menu.

Grouping the files:

Right-click in the column header and select the group option in the context menu, or select Ungroup to return to an ungrouped list.

You can create additional folders in the Topic Files section to organize your files to make them easier to manage. For example, it is a good idea to keep topic files without TOC entries in separate folders.

1.	Select the folder in which you want to create your new folder – for example Topics.

2.	Right-click and select Add New Folder in the context menu, or select Add File > Add New Folder in Project > Manage Topics.

3.	Enter the name for the new folder and select OK,

Cutting and pasting is not possible with topic files in the Topic Files section because you are actually dealing with physical files. If you want to move topics around in your TOC by cutting and pasting you must do this in the TOC – see Moving, cutting and pasting topics for details. However you can move files between folders and delete files in the Topic Files section.

Moving topic files and folders:

To move a topic file from one folder to another just drag it to the new folder with the mouse. You can also move folders in the same way.

Deleting topic files:

Just select the topic file in the Explorer and press DEL or right-click and select Delete File.

Renaming topic files:

You cannot rename topic files directly. To rename the topic file you need to edit the Topic ID.

1.	Select the topic file in the Explorer.

2.	Select the tab in the editor pane, edit the Topic ID and save your project to update the Topic Files display.