Working with Stuffit Expander Preferences
You can change the behavior of StuffIt Expander using the StuffIt Expander preferences dialog. To open StuffIt Expander preferences, choose Preferences from the "StuffIt Expander" menu or click the "Preferences" button on the toolbar.
Expansion Preferences
The Expanding Preferences are used to determine how StuffIt Expander goes about the task of expanding an archive or encoded file.
- Automatically expand archives in...: This setting is used to setup a special folder that StuffIt Expander will periodically scan for items to be expanded. Any compressed, archived, or encoded files placed in the specified folder will be expanded automatically. This functionality is similar to that of the "Watch Folders" feature of previous Expander releases.
- Continue to expand if possible: This preference, when enabled, causes StuffIt Expander to scan the file that results from expanding an archive, compressed, or encoded file to see if it can be further expanded. For example, when this preference is enabled, and StuffIt Expander encounters a BinHex encoded StuffIt archive, it will start to expand the archive as soon as it has decoded the BinHex layer. Note: Archives, compressed, and encoded files contained within folders in the archive must be separately expanded.
- Set execute permissions by default: This preference determines whether StuffIt Expander should set the execute file permission on items expanded from archives that do not store UNIX file permissions, such as Zip (.zip) and the older StuffIt (.sit). If you un-check this box, OS X applications expanded from such archives may not run correctly. StuffIt X archives (.sitx) are designed to preserve UNIX permissions and ignore this setting.
- Mount disk images: When this preference is enabled, StuffIt Expander will attempt to mount disk image files (resulting in the appearance of a "virtual disk"). Apple's Disk Utility is used to mount the images.
- Delete after expanding: When enabled, the archives you expand will be deleted once the files they contain are successfully extracted. Use this preference with caution! If the archive or compressed file is damaged, or any error occurs during expansion, the file may still be deleted and would then have to be replaced before you can try expanding it again.
- Scan for viruses using: StuffIt Expander allows you to automatically scan files that are extracted from archives and encoded files for viruses with your virus protection software. StuffIt Expander supports McAfee Virex, Symantec/Norton Anti-Virus, and Intego VirusBarrier. If you would like to try using a different Virus program, choose "Other..." from the pop-up menu.
- Report errors: This preference determines how StuffIt Expander will handle errors that occur while files are being expanded. You can choose to ignore error message that occur, to have them displayed in window, or to have them written to disk in a log file.
Destination Preferences
The Destination preferences determine where StuffIt Expander will save files that have been extracted from archives, compressed files, or encoded files. You can choose the location where files are extracted. The following options are available:
- Into the Same Folder as the Archive: When this option is selected, files will be saved to the same location as the archive, compressed file, or encoded file from which they were expanded. This is the default setting.
- By Asking for a Destination: When this option is selected, StuffIt Expander will prompt you to specify a location to which files should be expanded.
- Into a Specified Location: Use this option to specify a location to be used every time StuffIt Expander saves a file.
- By Merging into a Specified Location: As with the "Into a specified location" option, this preference requires you to choose a location on the hard drive to which the contents of the archive will be expanded. "Merge" refers to the behavior Expander will use when it attempts to expand a folder from the archive to the specified location, only to find a folder with the same name already exists. When merging is not specified, StuffIt will create a new copy of the folder with a ".1" at the end of its name. If the merging feature is turned on, StuffIt will expand files to the copy of the folder that already exists on the hard drive rather than creating a new one. If, when the Merging feature in enabled, StuffIt tries to expand a file from an archive, and finds that a file with the same name already exists in the selected destination, you will be prompted to select which of the two files you would like to preserve.
- By Merging into a Location Specified by the Archive: This applies the same "merging" location described for the "Merge into the specified location" option. Instead of prompting you for the location to which items should be expanded, however, this option will attempt to obtain a location from the "Source" information stored by the archive. Typically, this option will only be useful when you are expanding StuffIt X archives created by Archive Manager's Scheduler, or the older Archive Assistant.
In addition to telling StuffIt Expander where to place items that are expanded, you can specify whether or not StuffIt Expander should place expanded files into a new folder. The preferences set in this dialog are not applied if either of the "Merge Folders" features are enabled.
- When the archive contains multiple items: This is the default option. When this option is selected, StuffIt Expander will create a surrounding folder whenever the archive contains multiple items at the root (first) level. The name of the archive will be used for the newly created folder.
- Never: StuffIt Expander will never create a surrounding folder.
- Always: StuffIt Expander will always create a surrounding folder.
File Mappings
The File Mappings dialog allows you to determine, individually, which archive and encoded file formats will be opened with StuffIt Expander when double-clicked in the Finder.
If you purchased the StuffIt Deluxe suite, this preference also allows you to choose whether StuffIt X, StuffIt, Zip, Tar or RAR archive will be expanded with StuffIt Expander or opened in browse-mode in StuffIt Archive Manager when double-clicked in the Finder. Compressed Tar archives can also be browsed in StuffIt Archive Manager by assigning bzip2, gzip, and UNIX compress accordingly.
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