I am trying to understand this software and am having such a difficult time. 

My understanding is that the Scan Website > Analysis Filters are there to add your filters before you scan and that the Scan Website > Output Filters are there to filter out what you actually want to show in your sitemaps.

I am doing a sitemap.html, I like the fact that it scans everything so I can find errors, duplicates, etc., but the difficult time comes in with creating the actual sitemaps.  Why is it that if I change my Output filters after a site is scanned that I have to rescan it?  Shouldn't the output filters just use the data that is already scanned so you can output it the way you want and change it multiple ways without having to rescan every time?

Website scan | Analysis filters
= determines which URLs are analyzed.

Website scan | Output filters
= determines which URLs are kept after website scan finishes.
(Strictly speaking, the URLs are marked for removoal during the scan. When using default options, the URLs will be removed when the scan has finished. There is an option to override this, so the URLs are still visible after the scan has finished.)


Usually you will want to use the same filters in both, but there are situations where the distinction between the two things can be useful.

Relevant help pages:
http://www.microsystools.com/products/sitemap-generator/help/sitemap-robots-noindex-nofollow/
http://www.microsystools.com/products/sitemap-generator/help/website-crawler-scanner-filters/
http://www.microsystools.com/products/sitemap-generator/help/website-crawler-output-filters/

Note:

You can manually delete/remove URLs after website scan as well.

After website scan, simply select them in the Analyze website view and delete them (see "Table" menu)

I still don't understand.  If you run a scan, and then you put output filters in place, you would think that those output filters are applied to the already scanned data, that you shouldn't have to rescan again.

I have a large ecommerce site, I want to scan everything so I can see where problems are.  By scanning the entire site, I can determine if I need to put things in my robots.txt file. 

However, there are things I don't want in my sitemap.html file.  Without going  through and deleting things, why can't I use the output folders to use the already prescanned data and tell it don't show this file, or that file, then print the sitemap.html file? 

Why does the entire site need to be rescanned if the output filters are applied after the scan?



like to see everything

QuoteI still don't understand.  If you run a scan, and then you put output filters in place, you would think that those output filters are applied to the already scanned data, that you shouldn't have to rescan again.

Notice that "output filters" is found under tab "website scan". Thus, the "output filters" are applied during the website scan. Just like the "analysis filters" found under tab "website scan" are applied during "website scan". (The removal of URLs happens at end of scan, but sometimes "output filters" are also used during the scan in some sitautions.)

To quickly filter and remove URLs after the website scan has finished, please see:
http://www.microsystools.com/products/sitemap-generator/help/sitemap-generator-user-interface/
(Look for section "Quick Filtering of URLs after Site Scan Has Finished")