Organizational Challenge: Week Three

January 21st, 2008 by Chris

Table of contents for New Year, New Comp-U-ter

OK, I admit it, I was really really bad about doing 15 minutes a day. The early part of the week I was actually quite busy. If you haven’t seen, The ACDSee Team and I were planning a big birthday celebration. That ended up being priority for a few days. However, what I did was work for 15 minutes each on Monday and Thursday and 30 minutes on Friday. The rest of the weekend, I was able to get in at least 15 minutes each day. So it works out ok, right?

My Week Two Tasks:

Back Up and Optimize Database: This is so routine now for me that I didn’t even have to think twice about doing this. I made sure that I backed up after each of my big tagging and purging sessions, since I didn’t want to lose any of the new information I had entered.
Clean up at least two Categories: I kept on working on the Ribbons and Fibers and the Bow Categories. I really got so much of that cleaned up. I found some that still needed designers names, so I added them. The other category I worked on was Frames- I wanted to have better sub-categories. I added Wrapped Frames to the Cluster Sub-category. To do this: In the Organize Pane, Right Click on the Category you want to edit, then, Click on Edit Category. You can then rename that Category. When you right Click, you can also delete or add a new category.

Delete any files that you know that you will never use: Oh boy, I went through my Templates Folder. I guess when I first started digi-scrapping, templates were one of the big, hot items that were given out as freebies. I had a lot-lot-LOT of templates. A lot of them, I would never use, and some I could never use. Why was I saving PSP Templates? I don’t have PSP! I also has tiffs and psds of the same template. I was able to really toss out quite a bit of stuff. And you know what? It actually felt good!

Continue to tag any files. Spend about 15 minutes a day doing this: Well, I did my best!

As you see, last week I was able to get a lot of miscellaneous files better organized. I hate that feeling of “things stuck in the corners” either in my home or in my computer folders. Do you have a stack pf papers that get shuffled from place to place or worse, simply ignored? That is what these files were like, so it felt refreshing to have them cleaned out and put in their proper place, even if it ended up being the recycle bin.
While I am sure we all have some more folder that can use some extra attention, but let’s move on to another problem that I know I have been ignoring: Duplicate Authors. In your Organize Pane, you will see a Section called Auto Categories.

Photo Manager comes with pre-installed categories for these that are not editable. However, there are two sub-categories, Commonly Used and Photo Properties and you can move them between these two sub-categories. To do this, right click on the category, and you can either “Add to Commonly Used” or “Remove from Commonly Used.”
To work in the Author Category, click on the on the +sign to the left of Author. This will drop down all of your authors.
TIP: This will only work if you have been adding the designer to the Author Box in the Properties Pane. If you have not been adding the Designer’s name, you can read how to do it here: Easily add Designer and Kit Name

As I am scrolling down, I see lots of duplicate authors. Here is a sample of the different entries I have for Danielle Young.

I have one in lower case and one misspelled.To combine these into one category, select all variations of the author by checking the box next to the name. Make sure that you have Match Any selected.

Select All or Ctrl-A.

Go to the Properties Pane. Click in the Author Box, the program will ask you to Reset Author for all selected files? Click Yes. Then type the correct name into the Author Box and hit Enter. When you go back to the Organize Pane, you should only see the one, correct Author name. If not, refresh the page (F5) and that should do the trick.

TIP: Sometimes, you’ll get a “stubborn” author that doesn’t want to go away. So far, I have not been able to figure out how to get rid of them- so if you know, email me digiscrapinfo@gmail.com or post in this thread.

This task is somewhat time consuming, but it really helps to when you want to search for a product made by a certain designer. For people on CT’s , this is especially helpful when creating a layout for a specific designer. Say I am creating a layout for Nina Scraps and I want to only use her products. All I have to do is click the box next her name and it will bring up all of her designs. If I want to further refine my search and look only for frames by her, I switch the Match Any/All to “All” and select both her name and Frames.