Tagging is a FEATURE in Windows 7

[Jim Lewis]

Tagging is a feature built into the Windows 7 File System. It is available for use on Office documents and some common image formats, .JPG, .TIF. Also, Windows Media formats, .WMA, .WMV. Also, Quicktime .MOV. File formats that do not offer tags in the Win7 file system are .PNG, .PDF, .HTM, .ZIP, .RTF. (see comment at end) Some file formats, while not offering the TAG field may offer other specific fields like COMMENTS. EDIT: Correction on PDF. See 2nd post down. Depends on PDF handling products installed on your computer!!.

The Indexing/Search Engine built into Windows 7 automatically indexes Windows 7 tags as special keywords apart from generic text.

When you right mouse click on a file, pick Properties, then Details, you will see the fields that are available for that file type.

To see how to take advantage of the power of tags, see Advanced tips for searching in Windows in Windows HELP (click on START button ,lower left in Taskbar).

For example, if you had defined a tag called "Hawaii vacation" when you type "tag: Hawaii vacation" in the Search Box in a File Folder Windows in Windows Explorer at the topmost level of your USER NAME folders, you will find all the files, pictures, that you have tagged "Hawaii vacation." (all these examples are quoted to make clearer what you type but omit the quotes or punctuation marks like , or .

So it can get to be a drag to type the colon after the tag name. If you open a Windows Folder Explorer Window, click on the Organize dropdown, pick Folder and Search Options, then on the Search tab, check "Use Natural Language Search." If you do this, then you can simply type "tag Hawaii vacation" As shown in the HELP section in Win7 that I recommend above, this will make your Search HITS looser as the natural query language engine will be guessing what you mean since you are no longer helping it out by putting colons after the terms that define Search Fields.

Another related feature is at the top of a Windows Explorer window, you see Field headings for File Properties. The default headings are Name, Date Modified, Type, and Size. Mouse right click on a Field Heading. You will see the File Properties options that you can insert in the table. Tags are one of the properties. If you click on "Tags" in the dropdown for available fields, now the Tags a file has will be displayed in the Windows Explorer view that shows that file. By dragging on the Heading Width, you can adjust the display size of the Tags column in Windows Explorer to be of adequate width to read the names of multiple tags. You can drag the tag heading to another column location if you don't want it at the very end of the file table view.

If you have assigned tags, a further cool feature if you are looking at a file list where the TAGS heading is available is to click on the DropDown arrow shown to the right when your mouse cursor passes over the Tags heading. The tag names shown in the DropDown are the tags used on files in THAT folder (not all over your computer). Checking a tag name will restrict the Explorer view to only those files that contain the tag. Win7 seems to remember your Explorer View settings on a Folder by Folder basis. If you want the Tags column heading to appear in all Folder views, after you have arranged the File Properties column headings the way that you like them, you can go to the Organize dropdown in Windows Explorer, Folder and Search Options, View Tab, and click the Apply to Folders button. If you want to remove the Tags heading from all folders, simply reconfigure a folder to not have the Tags heading, then use the Apply to Folders button again (or the Reset Folders button in the same Folder Options view will restore your default settings to all folders).

If you have been religiously entering KEYWORDS in Office documents all these years, you will be rewarded as they will automatically show up as tags at the File System level in Win7. If you enter keywords in your JPG photos, they will show up as TAGS at the File System level. Unfortunately, doesn't seem to work for RAW photo formats, NEF (Nikon), CR2 (CANON), and DNG (Adobe).

You cannot tag HTM files at the Win7 file system level. But if the HTM author used the HTML tag "meta" with the attribute value NAME= "keywords" any attribute values for the related attribute CONTENT will show up at the Win7 file system level.

You can easily add keywords to an HTM (HTML) file by editing the HTM file in NOTEPAD and adding your tags/keywords to any META tag with attribute Name=Keywords in the Content attribute. Or, if there is no such META tag in the heading, add as a separate line, using NOTEPAD, in the HEADING section
<META name=Keywords content="(your keywords here separated by commas)">

(practice on a file copy you don't care about first!!!!!)

This post is related to my suggestion that Living Cookbook have tags - consider that Win7 already has a powerful tagging feature:

http://www.radiumforums.com/showthre...iving-Cookbook

[Jim Lewis]

If you want to see all the tags used on files that are indexed on your system, just go to a top-level folder, like your User Name folder. With TAGS set to show as a column heading in Windows Explorer, in the SEARCH box at the upper right, enter the wild card asterisk "*" (without quotes). Scoot the Search Result window to the far right with the scroll bar down at the bottom so you can see the Dropdown Arrow for the tags heading. Click on the dropdown and you will see all the tags used on indexed files on your computer for the folder you selected and all subfolders under it.

Most of the tags you see listed are probably from HTM files tagged by the original author if you save a lot of HTM files off the Internet to your hard disk as I do.

If you want to filter on more than one tag at once, you can check more than one tag at a time from the Tag DropDown. Checking "5 Star" and "Hawaii Vacation" would find all files marked EITHER "5 Star" OR "Hawaii Vacation"

If you want to find only those files that are "5 Star" AND "Hawaii Vacation" instead type in the Search box (clearing any existing search with the X button): "tag: 5 Star AND Hawaii Vacation" (without the quotes) EDIT: (2/7/11) Seem to need Search Natural Query Language turned on, see previous post.

See Advanced tips for Searching in Windows in the Windows 7 HELP and SUPPORT item on the START button (Windows symbol, lower left on Taskbar) for more tips on Boolean searches in Windows 7.

[Jim Lewis]

Apparently I've been suppressing my memory of Vista (but I liked it!). Tagging seems to work basically the same in Vista as described above.

Another powerful feature related to tagging and just File Properties in general is the Windows Explorer DETAILS pane.

In Explorer, go to the Organize dropdown, then pick Layout, then make sure Details Pane is checked.

When the Details Pane is checked, down at the bottom of the Windows Explorer window, a pane appears toi show you File Properties including Tags. When you mouse over the Tags area, a flyout will show you all the Tags associated with that file and offer you an Add Tag option. If you change anything about the File Properties, you will have to hit the SAVE Button that appears over to the right in the Details Pane.

Another very powerful thing about tags is that you only have to type part of the word or words that are in a tag, not the complete tag. So if you typed: "tag: vacation AND star" you'd get the SAME Search hits as included in the search as "tag: Hawaii vacation AND 5 star"

It seems if you have text entered in the KEYWORDS field of Document Properties in a PDF file, those keywords will be treated as tags do, just as for Office files, based on my wife's computer. Strangely, indexing of PDF files under Windows Search depends on having an additional program like Adobe Reader or Foxit's PDF iFilter installed, so YMMV according to what PDF reader/indexing program was installed last on your computer.

EDIT: PDF searching on everything but keywords/tags was working for me because the last PDF product I installed was from Nuance, overwriting anything from Adobe, apparently. After downloading and installing the 64-bit PDF iFilterfrom Adobe designed to work with Windows Search under 64-bit Win7, I can now index PDF keywords as tags in Win7. So I'm all set to tag e-recipes I publish from LC in PDF or DOC format!

[vogelap]

Tagging in LC would be amazing. +1