Coverting Groups to Regular Hierarchical Keywords

[Damit]

I was reading this thread Convert group level keywords to keywords. as the Groups feature did not work as I envisioned, even though I read and searched everything I could find about it in the help section and on this forum.

I see now how one can get in trouble with groups. I did not realize that they would not show in the @keywords list, as an organizational tool and parent or higher level "keyword," as they do in the thesaurus, though it makes sense that they do not, as they are not really keywords.

Unfortunately, like Aubrey found, using Groups created a bit of a mess in my Category view. So, I went to the properties and changed "Yes" on the group level to "No," expecting that they would "convert" to keywords, and that their children would still be included under them, but that does not seem to be the case. It seems as they have been orphaned from the Group that has now been converted to a keyword. The keywords still exist, but they cannot be found in the Thesaurus. It is almost like converting the group to keyword creates a new keyword and all everything associated with it was cleared. It seems everything originally in the group need to be reassociated with the new keyword to which it was converted.
Is this normal? Am I correct that I have to reassociate/redefine all the children and their links and synonyms to the Keyword which was converted from the group?

[Mario]

I see now how one can get in trouble with groups. I did not realize that they would not show in the @keywords list, as an organizational tool and parent or higher level "keyword," as they do in the thesaurus, though it makes sense that they do not, as they are not really keywords.

That's the sole purpose of groups. You mark a level in your keyword hierarchy as a group to use it only organization purposes. You can see in the Keywords Panel that that the group level is never added as part of the keyword, so this should not come hardly as a surprise. What group levels are is also explained in the corresponding section in the thesaurus help.

Making changes to the thesaurus has no impact on existing keywords or other metadata.

If you later want to, say, change the keyword beaches|Daytona to LOCATION|beaches|Daytona, you have several possibilities, e.g.

A)

1. Select all files with beaches|Daytona
2. In the Keywords Panel, click on beaches|Daytona. This brings it into the editor.
3. Add LOCATION| to the beginning an d press <Enter>
4. <Ctrl>+click beaches|Daytona to mark ti as deleted.
5. Press <Ctrl>+<S> or click somewhere in the File Window.


B)

1. Create a new category named LOCATION under @Keywords.
2. Drag the category beaches|Daytona onto the new LOCATION in the Category View. It becomes the parent and the keywords are adjusted accordingly.

C)

Use the The Metadata Mechanic to replace beaches|Daytona  with LOCATION|beaches|Daytona

[Damit]

Thank you so much for confirming and the instructions. I read the help section but I could not find how Groups would be represented in @keyword category view or panel. I anticipated it looking more like the thesaurus, where they are visible, than the keyword panel, where they are not. Luckily I took your advice and experimented. 

[Mario]

@Keywords is built from the actual keywords in your files. Keywords produced by IMatch or other software.

Since keyword levels you marked as group in your thesaurus don't become part of the actual keywords, they cannot show in the data-driven @Keywords category.

It's totally up to you. Make a level a group to exclude it from keywords - or not.