XYplorer Beta Club

Many filetypes natively allow tagging. Is there any way to save the tags in the actual file whenever it is supported by the filetype? And, does XYplorer read the existing tags from the native file format?

Why: Technologies change, I do not like to invest time into features like tagging that are not universally portable.

When duplicate files are identified, can the tags from all of the identical files be consolidated before deleting the duplicate files?

Hi and welcome,

no, XY tagging does not interact with any sort of in-file-storage.

XY tagging uses a very simple and open database format in the file tag.dat. You can actually edit the database in notepad. In my opinion this is more universally portable and future proof than relying on file type dependent in-file-storage. E.g., WinXP supported ADS as channel for the file comments, but Vista disallowed ADS so the comments were gone resp. inaccessible. This will not happen with XY's tags.

No, no such Dupe smartness.

Don

Thanks Don.

Some aspects of computing still feel like we are in the dark ages.

Yep. If you see the light, share it.

I would have expected EXIF and MP3 formats stable enough to incorporate those tags into the actual files, but, yes, Now I remember, the ms office docs changed formats from .doc to .docx, so my old program for bulk changing of doc properties (that I use in fields within the doc) could not modify .docx properties but the new programs could only change .docx and not doc, and .... headaches.

FYI, why I asked. Over the years, I have accumulated many file backups from many computers. A huge amount of duplication, but the effort to de-dupe has been greater than the pain of storing old drives. One potential solution was to (1) auto-tag all of the files in all of the backups, using the path's folder names as tags. Then de-dupe, but somehow consolidate all tags for a given file before deleting the duplicates. Tagging everything before deleting the duplicates would mean that I do not need to be concerned about which file location is preserved and which is deleted, which would greatly simplify the de-dupe process!!

But, alas, an evening of searching through tagging programs and de-dupe programs has not yielded a good solution. When adding files, some tagging programs will recognize duplicate files, adding the tags from the duplicate to the existing file, but in those programs I have not readily seen how I could preserve my tags or export to a new file structure (based on the tags). (Because too many programs disappear too quickly.)

Btw, there's this script ( http://www.xyplorer.com/xyfc/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=8587 ) that saves tags in ADS. Hope this helps.

Thanks for your prompt responses!