Metadata and Power Searches : Working with File Properties

You can view and edit a file's properties in many ways. One way is to open the folder in which the file is contained, then select the file's icon. The Details pane, if open, display's the file's properties. If the Details pane isn't open, click the Organize button and choose Layout => Details pane. Or, click the Change Your View button in the toolbar and choose Details.

Initially, the Details pane might be too short to show all the file's properties, but you can drag its top border upward to see more properties. Figure 1 shows an example where I'm viewing the properties for a Microsoft Word 2007 document. Other file types will have other properties.

Figure 1. A file's properties in the Details pane.

1. Viewing properties sheets

Here's another way to view a file's properties: Right-click its icon and choose Properties. A dialog box opens. If that dialog box has a Details tab, that's where you're most likely to find the kinds of properties you can create and edit. You'll often hear the term properties sheet used to describe that set of properties, because it's kind of like a sheet of paper on which properties are written.

Figure 2 shows a couple of sample properties sheets. On the left is the properties sheet for the Word document shown in Figure 1. On the right is the properties sheet for a JPEG image. When there are more properties than fit in the box, use the scroll bar at the right side of the box to see others.

Every property has a name and a value. The value is some text, date, or number that's assigned to the property. In the properties sheets, the property names are listed down the left column. The value assigned to each property (if any) appears to the right of the property name.

Figure 2. Examples of properties sheets.

2. Viewing properties in columns

Yet a third way to view properties is through the Details view in Windows Explorer. In any folder (including the results of a search), click the Views button and choose Details. You'll see a few columns across the top of the contents pane. But what you see isn't necessarily all there is. The horizontal scroll bar across the bottom of the pane lets you scroll to other columns. You can also add columns to the view (or remove columns) by right-clicking any column heading, as in Figure 3. The menu that appears shows a few other columns from which you can choose. Click More... at the bottom of that menu to see others.

Figure 3. Choosing columns in Details view.

3. Editing properties

To change a file's properties, select its icon and make your changes in the Details pane. Or right-click the file's icon, choose Properties, click the Details tab, and make your changes there.

You can change properties for multiple files using the same basic method. You just have to select the icons for the files first. But there is a catch. You'll be limited to changing properties that all the selected files have in common. This can be a real pain when you're working with multiple file types. For example, many different types of files for storing pictures exist — JPEG, TIFF, PNG, BMP, and GIF to name a few. The newer file types, JPEG, TIFF, and PNG, offer many properties. The older file types, BMP and GIF, offer relatively few.

Figure 4 shows an example of what can happen when you select multiple file types. There I've selected all the icons in the folder, each of which is a picture. Then I right-clicked one of them, chose Properties, and clicked the Details tab. Hardly any properties are showing because all those different file types have few properties in common.

With old file types that support few properties, about the only thing you can do is convert them to newer file types. For example, I had a lot of GIF images on my system when I installed Windows 7. That file type doesn't offer any really usable properties. So I used the batch conversion feature of my graphics program (Paint Shop Pro) to convert them all to PNG files. I chose PNG because it supports transparency like GIF does.

Figure 4. Properties for multiple files of different types.

If you have many files to which you want to assign new properties, you might consider creating a search that brings similar files together all under one roof, so to speak. Open the Libraries folder (or other folder that is a parent of the one you want to search) and click in the Search box to specify the types of files you want to work with. In Figure 5, I typed the following into the Filename box:

*.jpg OR *.jpeg OR *.tif OR *.tiff OR *.png NOT *.lnk

That brings together all the TIFF, JPEG, and PNG files in the search scope, and omits any shortcuts (.lnk files). (The .lnk files won't have many editable properties either.) Perform the search and then use column headings to sort items based on their current folder location. You can also add columns that allow you to see the properties you intend to work with. Of course, that's just an example. You can set up searches to find and organize things as you see fit.

Save the search when you're done so you can open and use it whenever you have time to work with properties. To change properties for any single file, click its name. To assign the same property value to multiple files, select their icons. Then use the Details pane or properties sheet to make your changes. It will take some time if you have many files to work with. But having all the files together in one place, and the properties of interest in plain view, can make the job less daunting.

Figure 5. Specify the types of files in the Search box.