How to exclude folders that differ only in their creation data

[niente0]

Hi all, I can't find a way to hide folders with identical content but with a different creation date.
A bunch of "different" folders are shown on the list, and I have to check them one by one to find the ones with different files inside.
Is there a way to ignore the date comparison on folders and just show the ones which have their content differing?
Thanks a lot.

[SuperHeroDev505]

I ran into the same thing before and it drove me a bit crazy at first. The tool was marking folders as different even though I knew the files inside were exactly the same. In my case, it turned out it was not really comparing the contents. It was also looking at the folder dates, so if the creation or modification date was different, it showed them as different folders.

Once I went into the comparison settings and told it to ignore timestamps and just compare by content, the list became much cleaner. After that, only folders with actual file differences were shown, and I did not have to open each one manually anymore.

So the key is not creating a new copy or restructuring anything. It is just changing the comparison mode so metadata like dates is ignored and only real content differences are considered.

[niente0]

Thanks for your answer!
Could you kindly tell me exactly where I can find the option to disable the timestamp comparison? I cannot find it in settings...

[sdottaka]

I may be misunderstanding your question, but from the screenshot it looks like the folders are expanded and marked as different even though no items are shown inside them.

In that case, the folders are likely marked as different not because of their timestamps, but because they contain items that exist only on the left or only on the right. Those items may be hidden if you have enabled options in the View menu to hide identical items or left-only / right-only items.

If you want to ignore left-only or right-only items, you can use a folder filter in the Select Files or Folders dialog.
For example, set Folder → Filter to:

fe:LeftExists and RightExists

This limits the comparison to files that exist on both sides and may give you the result you expect.

If you also want to ignore folders that exist only on one side, use:

fe:LeftExists and RightExists|de:LeftExists and RightExists

[niente0]

Thank you so much! Now I have a much cleaner list.
I just have to find a way to hide folder containing skipped files, which keep showing. I'll play around with the filters a bit...