# PortabilityMGT 1.3.0 — User Manual

PortabilityMGT is a management tool for Liquidware ProfileUnity **Portability**
profile shares. It browses profile data, shows what is consuming space, force-deletes
locked or ACL-protected items, restores settings from Retention backups, and views
and edits the Portability archive files themselves.

The tool ships in two editions:

- **PortabilityMGT** (full) — for administrators; manages any Portability share.
- **PortabilityMGT Technician** — for help-desk staff; scoped to pre-configured
  environments and (optionally) a single user profile. See section 9.

> ⚠ PortabilityMGT permanently deletes data and modifies archives. Deletions do not
> go to the Recycle Bin. Every destructive action asks for confirmation first.

---

## 1. Starting the tool

The application requires **administrator rights** (Windows prompts automatically).

**Full edition** — enter or browse to the root Portability folder (local path or UNC,
e.g. `\\server\share\Portability`) and click **OK**. The last-used path is remembered.

**Technician edition** — select an environment (Dev/QA/Prod or as configured by your
administrator) and enter the **username** whose profile you need to manage, then click
**Open Profile**. Leave the username empty to open the environment share itself.

## 2. The browser window

The main window is an Explorer-style browser: folder tree on the left, file list on
the right, toolbar on top, status bar at the bottom.

| Toolbar item | Function |
|---|---|
| ◀ ▶ ⬆ | Back / Forward / Up one level (Alt+Left, Alt+Right, Alt+Up) |
| Path box | Shows the current path; type a path and press Enter to jump there |
| 🔄 Refresh | Reload the current folder and tree |
| 🗑 Delete | Force-delete the selected items (or press Del) — see section 4 |
| 📂 Change Root / 🌐 Environment | Switch to another share (full) or environment/user (technician) without restarting |
| 📊 Sizes | Size breakdown of the current folder — see section 5 |
| ↩ Rollback | Restore settings from Retention — see section 6 (enabled when the current folder contains a `Retention` subfolder) |
| 📋 Report | Profile summary report across the share — see section 7 |
| ⚠ Reset User | Delete a user's portability data while preserving Retention — see section 8 |
| ☀/🌙 | Toggle light / dark theme (remembered between sessions) |
| ✅ Select Folder | Hand the current folder to the bulk-delete screen (section 4) |
| ✖ Close | Exit |

Double-click a folder to open it. Double-click an archive (`.7z`, `.louzip`, `.lou`)
to open the archive viewer (section 10). Other files open with their default program.

## 3. Search

The search bar under the toolbar searches the root you opened. Two scopes:

- **👤 Profile folders (fast)** *(default)* — matches folder names directly under the
  root only. Use this to find a user profile on a share with thousands of profiles;
  results are instant because nothing is scanned recursively.
- **🌳 Everything (deep)** — recursive search of all files and folders under the
  root. Use to locate a specific file or settings archive; results are capped at
  1000 and show a Location column.

Press Enter to search, Escape or **✖ Clear** to return to normal browsing.
Double-click a result folder to navigate into it.

## 4. Deleting items

Portability data is frequently locked or permission-protected. The delete engine
runs `takeown` → `icacls` → `attrib` before deleting, which is why the tool must run
elevated.

Two ways to delete:

- **In the browser:** select one or more items, press Del or click 🗑 Delete,
  confirm. A log panel shows per-item SUCCESS/FAILED results.
- **Bulk-delete screen:** click **✅ Select Folder** to open a checklist of
  everything in the current folder (with Select All / Deselect All), tick the items
  to remove, and click **Delete Selected**. **← Back** returns to the browser.

## 5. Size breakdown (📊 Sizes)

Shows each item in the current folder with its total size and a proportional bar so
the largest consumers are obvious at a glance. Use it before clean-ups to see where
the space is going (e.g. which user, or which settings group inside a profile).

## 6. Rollback / Restore (↩ Rollback)

ProfileUnity keeps point-in-time backups in each profile's `Retention` folder.
Open a user's profile folder and click **↩ Rollback**.

The left tree offers four restore scopes:

- **🌐 Entire Profile (all settings)** — every setting captured in one snapshot.
- **📦 Group** (e.g. `MicrosoftOffice365`) — all parts of that ruleset (appdata,
  localappdata, registry) in one action.
- **Single setting** (e.g. `appdata` under a group) — one part only.
- **✓ Checkbox selection** — tick any combination of settings across groups; the
  version list then offers only dates that contain **all** ticked items, and one
  rollback restores them together. Ticking a group ticks all its parts; ticking
  🌐 Entire Profile selects everything.

The right pane lists available versions (newest first) with coverage information,
e.g. `2026-05-12 09:41:03 (3 of 3 settings)`. Select a version and click
**↩ Rollback to Selected Version**. The confirmation dialog lists exactly what will
be replaced.

Notes:

- Live files for the chosen settings are replaced with the backup copies. Settings
  **not** present in the chosen snapshot are left untouched — never deleted.
- Each setting restores independently and is logged; one failure does not stop the
  rest. The summary reports how many restored or failed.
- Rollback cannot be undone (the backup itself remains in Retention, though).
- Have the user log off before rolling back, and verify at next logon that the
  restored settings apply.

## 7. Profile summary report (📋 Report)

A sortable per-user overview of the whole share: platform, number of settings
groups, active size, number of retention versions, retention size, and total size.
**💾 Export CSV** saves the table for capacity reviews or clean-up planning.
*(In the technician edition the report covers only the opened scope.)*

## 8. Reset User (⚠ Reset User)

Deletes **all** portability data for one user while preserving every folder named
`Retention` (at any depth), so the user starts fresh at next logon but rollback
remains possible. Available when a profile folder is selected (one level below the
share root; in the technician edition, the opened profile itself). The confirmation
dialog explains exactly what will happen; results are logged per item.

## 9. Technician edition

The technician build limits blast radius for help-desk use:

- Environments (name + share path) are defined by your administrator; you cannot
  enter arbitrary paths.
- With a username entered, the tool is **fenced** to that single profile — the
  address bar, tree, and history cannot leave it, and the share is never listed.
- With the username left empty, the selected environment share opens for broader
  work (e.g. when the exact profile folder name must be looked up first).
- **🌐 Environment** in the toolbar returns to the environment/user picker at any
  time. The window title always shows the current scope, e.g.
  `Portability [Prod — jsmith]`.
- **Reset User** is never available at a share root — only on an individual profile.

Administrators: the environment list lives in `environments.txt` next to
`PortabilityMGT-Tech.exe` — see INSTALL.md for the format.

## 10. Archive viewer & editor

Double-click any Portability archive to inspect it:

- `.7z` / `.louzip` — file-tree view with sizes, modified dates, and compression
  summary.
- `.lou` — listed through the bundled Liquidware LouZip engine.
- `.lbr.lou` (registry archives) — shown as a registry tree: click a key to see its
  values (name, type, data).

**Preview:** double-click a text-based file (xml, json, ini, txt, reg, …) to view
its content in the preview pane.

**Editing** (file archives, when the format allows — the status bar shows
✏ editable or 🔒 read-only with the reason):

| Action | How |
|---|---|
| Rename a file | Select it → **✎ Rename** → type the new name |
| Remove a file or folder | Select it → **🗑 Remove** → confirm |
| Change file content | Double-click the file, edit the text in the preview, click **💾 Save Changes to Archive** |

Format support: `.louzip` is always editable; `.7z` requires 7-Zip (`7z.exe`) on the
machine (see INSTALL.md); `.lou` is edited through the bundled LouZip engine. Saves
are atomic — a failed save never corrupts the original archive. Edited text is
written as UTF-8; original line endings are preserved. Files larger than 500 KB are
preview-only.

> ⚠ After editing an archive, verify at the user's next logon that ProfileUnity
> accepts it (archives have `.manifest` companion files that may be validated).

## 11. Tips & troubleshooting

- **Buttons greyed out in the archive viewer** — the archive is read-only; the
  status bar states why (e.g. install 7-Zip for `.7z` editing).
- **Rollback button disabled** — the current folder has no `Retention` subfolder;
  navigate into the user's profile folder first.
- **Deletes failing** — confirm the tool is running elevated and your account has
  rights on the share; per-item errors appear in the log panel.
- **Slow search** — switch the scope selector to "Profile folders (fast)" when you
  only need to find a profile folder.
- **Theme** — the ☀/🌙 toggle is remembered per user
  (`%AppData%\PortabilityMGT\theme.txt`).
