Once you've selected the files you want, you can simply drag and drop them to any location on your computer. This can be the Desktop, a folder on your computer in the left pane of Explorer, or another open Explorer window.

In this method, because of the way Windows handles drag and drop, Cyclef must first copy the files from your Xclef to a temporary folder on your computer. Once the transfer is complete, Cyclef signals Windows to copy the files from the temporary folder to the final destination.

The temporary folder used for transfers to your computer is called "tx2pc" and is found under the main Cyclef Explorer temporary folder, the location of which you can view and change under the "General" tab in the Configuration dialog. Remember that whichever hard disk you put your temporary folder on needs to have enough space to accomodate the transfers you plan to make. If your temporary folder and the destination folder are on the same hard disk, that disk will need twice as much free space as the total size of the files to be transferred.

A consequence of Windows' drag and drop mechanism is that if one of the files cannot be copied to the final destination, say because a file with the same name already exists, Windows will abort the whole transfer. If you had transferred a lot of files, this could be annoying. If this happens, you can still access the files in the temporary folder, which will remain there until the next transfer.

Due to the limitations of drag and drop described here, we recommend that you normally use the following alternative method of transferring files to your computer, "Copy to Computer".

This is the preferred method of transferring files from your Xclef to your computer. Unlike drag and drop, "Copy to Computer" bypasses the temporary folder and transfers files directly to their destination on your computer. As a result, it is faster, does not require any temporary overhead space on your hard disk, and mimimizes complications.

To use this method, select the files you want, right-click, and select "Copy to Computer...". Cyclef then displays a dialog where you select the transfer destination. Click "OK" and the transfer begins. Cyclef also remembers the target folder you choose and makes it the default location for the next transfer.

Recall from Section 4 that the Xclef's organize audio content by tag information only, and essentially discard the original filename the file had when it was on your computer. As a result, Cyclef must synthesize a new filename using the tag information for each audio file that you transfer back to your computer. Note that this does not apply to data files stored on the Xclef. In the case of data files, the filename as stored on the Xclef is used.

Cyclef makes this filename synthesis process totally customizable. Go to the "Xclef" tab in the Configuration dialog. Here you can define a template string that tells Cyclef exactly how you would like it to construct filenames from the available tag information. You simply type out a string of text into which you can embed various "tokens". Cyclef replaces these tokens with the appropriate tag data for each file. The tokens Cyclef recognizes are:

• %A - Artist
• %L - Album
• %N - Track Number
• %T - Track Title
• %C - Codec, or filetype extension (mp3, wma, or wav)
• %Y - Year
• %G - Genre

You can insert whatever other text you want to be part of every filename, with the proviso that it must consist of only valid Windows filename characters. The characters that are illegal in Windows filenames are:

: * ? " < > |

Please note that these illegal characters are automatically removed from the final filename generated from your tag fields. The following is the default format string and an example of the kind of filename it would produce:

%A - %L - %N - %T.%C
Britney Spears - Oops - 02 - Stronger.mp3

If the target file already exists, Cyclef replaces it with a new copy transferred from your Xclef.

Some people like to keep their music organized by artist and album folders, and want matching folders automatically created when transferring files to their computer using Cyclef. Using the format strings, this is simple to do. Please note again that this only applies to audio files on Xclef models.

To generate folder structures, just insert back-slashes into the format string. The folders defined by the format string will be created relative to the copy destination. For example, the following format string will produce the following results when a file is copied to "C:\Music" and "D:\Burn2CD":

%A\%L\%N - %T.%C
C:\Music\Britney Spears\Oops\02 - Stronger.mp3
D:\Burn2CD\Britney Spears\Oops\02 - Stronger.mp3