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I have to find a document and or photo management app with checkboxes, not free form tagging

I would think it should be easy but I am having a heck of a time with this.  Loads of files - pictures, PDFs of different documents, etc.  Mostly in folders by the date they were taken. Whenever I need to find something I have to go through all the folders - a real pain.  I want to be able to search for the file based on tags.  But not free form tagging. The thing I thing of as an example - I have a picture of my 2 kids at walt Disney world.  Free form tags might be Liz or Elizabeth and Tom or Thomas, WDW or Disney or walt Disney world.  I envision being able to build a checkbox system that's even hieratical (sp?) - you could check a box 'family' that would have me, wife, and my kids.  or just want 1 or both kids, check their names.  Disney could be under florida which is under vacation.

But can't seem to find that - it always seems to be free form or has a limit of 10 or 20 check boxes.

Am I asking for too much?  How do others keep pictures / documents organized?
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Avatar of Joe Winograd
Joe Winograd
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OK, I installed it and started using photo gallery.  you say you don't use it, but would you know:

I can click on a tag and it shows things that have that tag. But say I want to search for pictures that have several tags (my son in WDW)...  suggestion? Guess I have to google it.

to assign tags, it seems you have to drag the picture to the tag to add the tag to the picture (rather than a long list you check the correct items or drag / drop the tag onto the picture.

I'm not seeing hierarchial tagging - I have several tags, like vacation, florida, wdw, but can't seem to get it so if I choose florida, I get the items that are tagged wdw.

Thanks!
ok, descriptive tags, you just drag / drop 1 into another (florida into vacation, wdw into florida).  I was getting the circle with line through it when dragging, so I thought that wasn't allowed.  Released the mouse and it worked.

people tags seem not to work that way (son / daughter under family, etc).

Could just as easily make family / people tags under descriptive tags area?
Do I dare ask? Once I tag every of the hundreds / thousands of pictures the way I want it, then Microsoft gives up on this app.... am I SOL? the tags aren't in each picture, right? Its a  separate database?  that likely can't be read by another app years from now?!

Oh you say you name the pictures appropriately and use folders.

but if you have a picture of a kid at WDW, what folder would you put it in? a folder of the kid's pics? Or WDW folder?  it should be in both I guess. I guess you can accomplish tagging by making folders for each tag and shortcuts to pictures? the tag folders would have the shortcuts - that would take less space?  so kids' folder and WDW folder would have the same shortcut to the picture stored elsewhere?!
interesting... I am bringing in some pictures that I must have tagged previously with another app?  And their tags are showing up?  so the tags are stored in the picture? But right click on the picture and choose properties, even summary / advanced, and I don't see the tags.   I see metadata like copyright, exposure time, iso speed, etc.
Seems you've made a ton of progress without me. :)  I'm sure you now know a lot more about the app than I do.

> so the tags are stored in the picture?

Yes, for JPGs. It uses the Extensible Metadata Platform (XMP) ISO standard for storing the metadata directly in the file. Here's a good article that discusses it:
http://aaron-kelley.net/blog/2008/03/migrating-vistas-windows-photo-gallery-database/

The author feels the same way you do:
the killer feature for me is the hierarchical tagging
I'll respond to your other questions tomorrow, but it's the wee hours for me and I need to pack it in now. Also, I'll be out of pocket tomorrow with no online access until mid-afternoon, but I'll check back into the thread as soon as I return to answer your other questions and see how you're doing. Regards, Joe
Sorry about not responding "tomorrow" to your other questions. Here you go:

> if you have a picture of a kid at WDW, what folder would you put it in?

Doesn't matter a whole lot — since my folders are always reasonably named, I'll find it.

> I guess you can accomplish tagging by making folders for each tag and shortcuts to pictures?

Yes, you can put a shortcut to a file in any number of folders.

> that would take less space?

Yes, much less space. Depending on the megapixels you shoot at, your photos could easily be 2MB each, even more. A shortcut is going to be in the 2KB range — a thousand times smaller!

> so kids' folder and WDW folder would have the same shortcut to the picture stored elsewhere?!

Yes, any number of folders can have a shortcut to the same file. So just one of the folders would have the actual image file and all the others would have a shortcut to it.

Regards, Joe