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Dijji / FileMeta

Enable Explorer in Vista, Windows 7 and later to see, edit and search on tags and other metadata for any file type
Microsoft Public License
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Tags not following, from one PC to another #83

Open Cr8zyIvan opened 4 years ago

Cr8zyIvan commented 4 years ago

I installed File Meta Association Manager on two PCs. Tagged some PDF files on one. Copied them to the second PC, and the copied files are shown as "Tagless" in Windows Explorer. I'm not certain If there's a setting or something I've done incorrectly, or if Tags are specific to the PC they're tagged on?

Dijji commented 4 years ago

If you use any of the built-in Windows mechanisms to copy the file, then meta data is copied from machine to machine. If you use intermediates such as a NAS, Dropbox or email, then your experience will vary.

Maybe the best way of seeing what is going on in your case is to go to the file in the second PC and right click on it in Explorer. The Metadata menu item should appear, allowing you to export meta data associated with the file. Do so and examine the results. This test avoids any complications with the setup of Explorer. If the Metadata menu item does not appear, then remember that you have to set up the extension using the Association Manager on each of the machines that you are using.

Dijji

Cr8zyIvan commented 4 years ago

Thanks for the swift reply! Actually, after posting my question, I noticed some of the behavior you described.

I just saw the option of Exporting/Importing Metadata. Pretty awesome!

A follow up question, Is there a way to setup "Metadata Import" automatically? E.g., if I keep the "metadata.xml" file in the original folder, then: move, edit, etc. the original file, then: move back, save, etc. the original file to the original folder. Is there an automatic system that ca be setup to import metadata?... After writing this out, I just realized how difficult this would be.

Really loving your program by the way. It absolutely baffles me that Microsoft has not implemented this for every file.

Anyhow, Cheers!

Dijji commented 4 years ago

I'm glad you're finding my program useful. Positive feedback is always gratefully accepted!

What you are observing makes entire sense. File Meta dependends on an NTFS feature to store metadata. Obviously, this will not be supported by, say, an FAT drive. Less obviously, it may also not be supported by third-party implementations that present like NTFS, but happen to have left a bit of the original out. This isn't always true, there are some NAS drives that work quite happily with File Meta.

On automatic restore. As you point out, this is a hard problem to solve generally. For a starting point, I have provided command line utilities for saving and restoring metadata for one or more files, so that you can drive these operations from any macro or programming language of your choice. Explorer does provide hooks which will allow detection of file changes, but I have never tried to wire them up because I'm worried about consistently doing the right thing. If the file changes, am I supposed to backup the meta data because it has been updated, or restore it in case it has been lost? For example, if metadata is removed, was it lost or deleted? I've never be able to come up with any tests on the file that would allow me to reliably make the right decision.

Dijji

gaiking-uk commented 4 years ago

Hi Dijji, I agree with GaXve in that FileMeta is a great program, great work developing it! However, I was also wondering about transferring the metadata with files (and/or bulk exporting metadata as a workaround)...

1 -- I store 50,000 in OneDrive, I access/update files on multiple machines so someway of embedding/transferring the metadata within the file would be amazing!

2 -- I would like to add metadata for PNG files, looking into the format in more detail - it does actually support the same metadata tags as JPG files (title, keywords, date taken, etc) however Windows does not recognise these...

2A -- I can use EXIFTOOL to manually set the metadata persistently in the file (so it retained when the file is transferred to/from OneDrive) however FileMeta does not detect/show this property

2B -- I can use FILEMETA to set the property, which then lets it show in Explorer, however it is not persistent (is lost when the file is transferred to/from OneDrive)

... and I was wondering / hoping there was a way to get both parts working together -- i.e. ideally... -- I extend the filetype in FILEMETA -- I use Explorer to add data for a property -- instead of writing the value to it's own property set / file stream, FILEMETA writes the property to the item (possibly using a command line tool like exiftool

Would anything like this be possible? Thanks in advance!

Dijji commented 3 years ago

File Meta exists because Microsoft switched to storing meta data only when it could be stored within a file (at the time of Windows Vista), and, by design, handles only those cases where this is not possible.

There are two scenarios: when the file has nowhere to put meta data, for example, a .txt file; and when the file could store meta data, but there is no file format specific handler to support it.

Recently, Microsoft has been adding better property handlers, that will store a wide range of properties. Where these exist, File Meta does not install its own property handler, but uses the system provided handler, which stores properties in the file, and just sets the profile, in much the way you describe. The extensions to which this applies are listed as Blocked here: https://github.com/Dijji/FileMeta/wiki/Affected-extensions

This does not include .png at the moment, so a format specific handler would be required to achieve your objective, which is beyond the scope of File Meta.

Dijji