Can Windows 7 assign arbitrary tags to files?

Question

Is there anything in Windows 7 that allows me to assign tags (ie. "Important", "Family", "Private") to files and then search by them?

For example, let's say I have pictures organized into directories like this:

\Photos\Baby\Birth

\Photos\Baby\Easter

\Photos\Family\Christmas

Now I'd like to tag individual pictures (or videos, documents, etc) inside those folders so I can do a search.

That might be a bad example but hopefully you get the idea. I'm hoping I don't need a third party application (because I'd like to tag any kind of file; not just pictures)

EDIT: I just saw that tags are built into Windows 7 but only for certain (very few??) file types. Can this be expanded or changed to include all file types?

Answer 1

Windows 7 doesn't natively have tagging of any sort aside from a few file formats that already support it in the file specifications (like, say, mp3 which has the ID3 tagging specification). You can add FOLDERS to libraries, but to do individual files like you want it will require a third-party application.