External Resources Window Pane

The External Resources window pane lets you select and maintain groups of external files that you want to share among Flare projects. The paths of these files are written to the registry so they will be available for all your Flare projects. See External Resources.

External resources can be virtually any local or network files that you have access to (e.g., images, PDF files, Flare project files). The external resources feature is ideal for shared files that you expect to change over time (e.g., logo images, PDFs, stylesheets), as opposed to, say, a template file that is simply copied into your project and changed only in that project.

How to Open This Window Pane

Select View > External Resources.

What You Can Do in This Window Pane

Following are the primary tasks that you can perform in the External Resources window pane.

• Add Folders to External Resources Window Pane You can browse and select folders containing files that you want to share among Flare projects. When you bring folders into the External Resources window pane, this does not mean that they are automatically part of your Flare project; it simply means that they are available to become part of a project and to be synchronized with the source files residing elsewhere. See Adding Folders to External Resources.
• Copy and Map Files After you add folders to the External Resources window pane, you can copy any of the files to your project, mapping them to the source files at the same time. See Copying and Mapping External Resource Files.
• Manage Mappings When you work with external resource files, you should create mappings (connections) between the copies of external files that you bring into your project and the source files outside of the project. You can do this at the point that you copy those files into your project. You can also manage these mappings whenever necessary through the Map Files and Folders dialog. This involves the ability to create, change, or remove mappings. See Managing Mappings of External Resource Files.
• Open and Edit Files You can open an external resource file by simply double-clicking it in Flare. However, keep in mind that if you do this from the External Resources window pane, you are opening the actual source file existing outside of your project. On the other hand, if you double-click the file from the Content Explorer, you are opening the copy of the external file. If you attempt to open a file type not supported in Flare, you will be directed to open the file in its default application. See Opening External Resource Files. 

• Synchronize Files After you map project files to source files located elsewhere, you can synchronize them to ensure that each file contains the same content. This process lets you import content from external files, export content from mapped files in the project, or keep the most recently modified content. See Synchronizing External Resource Files. If you attempt to synchronize files and Flare detects a conflict (i.e., a mapped file has been modified both locally and in its mapped location), a dialog opens so that you can take the appropriate action. See Merging Mapped Files.

Buttons and Sections

Option	Description
	Lets you add new folders with files to the External Resources window pane. See Adding Folders to External Resources.
	Opens the Select Project Path dialog, which lets you copy the selected file and place it somewhere in your project. See Copying and Mapping External Resource Files.
	Opens the Map Files and Folders dialog, which lets you manage mappings from copies of files in your project to the source files located elsewhere. See Managing Mappings of External Resource Files.
	Opens the Synchronize Files dialog, which lets you synchronize external files that are mapped to copies of files in your project. You can also manage mappings. See Synchronizing External Resource Files and Managing Mappings of External Resource Files.
	Shows or hides the folders that the files are stored in.
	Shows or hides the files. If you click this button when the Show Folders button is selected, the area splits into two halves. The folder is shown on the left side, and the files and subfolders within it are shown on the right.
	Collapses the folders.
	If the Show Files button is the only one selected, you can click this button to move up one folder level.
	Opens the selected item.
	Opens the Properties dialog for the selected item.
[Preview Bar]	This is the area at the bottom of the window pane. When you click on a file, this bar shows an icon, as well as the name of the file.