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To put it shortly ... I've got a r-re-he-heallly (Jim Carrey style) huge number of files that are not all of the same kind. They are all project files, from various projects, and include (but not limited to) .doc, .xls, .jpg, .gif, .dwg, .3mp, .dat ... all kinds. Problem is that many of them belong to several projects.

So I was wondering ... instead of sorting them into various directories, is there some plugin for windows explorer that enables one to tag files, and then to copy those tags (means, they would have to be saved in some relatively easy way) so that others with the same plugin could see those tags as well ?

All ideas on the subject welcomed ...

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63% accept rate
Related question, opened to any kind of file manager: superuser.com/questions/78473/… – Gnoupi Feb 15 '10 at 13:33
@Gnoupi - yes, I think I passed through that one while searching. Unfortunatelly, it doesn't mention any solution which works with explorer.exe, and I have no interest in changing file managers. – ldigas Feb 15 '10 at 13:58
@Idigas - yes, I'm not saying your question is a duplicate, only that this is related, just as a way to give other links to follow to someone who would stumble on this question, with a similar need. – Gnoupi Feb 15 '10 at 15:01
@Gnoupi - Oh, my mistake. Yes, good idea! – ldigas Feb 15 '10 at 15:16
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5 Answers

up vote 4 down vote accepted

Tag2Find is a nice solution that makes it easy to tag files (including drag and drop) and also search for them after they've been tagged.

enter image description here

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Interesting ... where does it store data, do you know ? Is it possible to transfer it (assuming both have Tag2Find installed) from one computer to another ? – ldigas Feb 15 '10 at 14:28
Tag2Find stores its data in its own database file (.db). Yes, it offers Import/Export functionality. You can read more about it in the User Guide here: tag2find.com/fileadmin/_config/docs/tag2find_guide_e.pdf – Mark Feb 15 '10 at 15:14
As far as I know tag2find also stores the tags in alternate datastreams, available on NTFS for each file. IMO that is even better than storing tags only in a db because you can always rebuild the db from the data and the db is just operating like an index. Problems with tag2find: reaallly slow progress on development, and the tags are proprietary (not compatible with other tagging software). – deepc Sep 6 '10 at 0:09
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up vote 0 down vote

Traditionally people have "tagged" files in Microsoft Windows by one of three methods:

  • create a directory with the tag name and place files inside
  • give the filename an extension with the tag name
  • place the tag name somewhere inside the file name

Any other method of tagging would be operating system independent - e.g. keeping a database (or flat file) mapping file names to tags.

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Drawbacks of the three: 1st - not so good when some files, are big, or when there are many repeated files amongts projects (very often with cad drawings). 2nd and 3rd ... ?? I've never seen this done, but I can predict a huge number of problems with it. Starting with source files, to ... to put it shortly - extension matters. And the 3rd is totally unusable with any kind of binary files. ... – ldigas Feb 15 '10 at 13:56
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3rd is actually in the fileNAME: Costs.ProjectX.xls, Employees.ProjectX.xls,... works well for me – jan Feb 15 '10 at 15:30
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@jan - yes, but that is not tagging ... it is changing the name. try putting 5-10 tags on one file in that way. – ldigas Feb 15 '10 at 16:24
@Idigas: Totally agree! @PP and jan: You have no idea on how much benefit a tagging file-system would brind! – Nam G. VU Dec 23 '10 at 11:58
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up vote 0 down vote

I use Directory Opus instead of default Explorer.

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Please explain how it can solve the problem described in the question. – slhck Mar 4 at 13:36
Directory Opus is a file/ftp explorer with lots of features. You can press F9 or Ctrl+M to change metadata including tags. But tags can't be found in the default explorer, just in DO. – Heidar Mar 7 at 5:30
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You may want to google for "Zotero". Tagging, virtual folders, automatic indexing of contents, search-as-you-type, navigation parths of practically unlimited length, same doc may appear in multiple folders. It was born a powerful bibliografic reference tool, but I have been using it for years for all my pesonal file management.

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up vote -3 down vote

Windows Live Photo Gallery has a good tagging feature.

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