Office document metadata panel vs. Default metadata panel

[BanjoTom]

I typically use the "Default" metadata panel to enter the typical metadata, for example, for photos. 

But I also have a number of Microsoft Office documents, such as Powerpoint and Word files.  With a Powerpoint file, the data that I see in its properties and have saved when I'm editing the Powerpoint application is visible in the Default metadata panel, but if I switch to the built-in "Office" metadata panel, all I see is a list of LOCKED (unwriteable) metadata fields. 

The attached image, made of two combined screen captures from IM 5.3.6 shows this.  Above the yellow line is a capture showing the "Default" metadata for a Powerpoint file, and below is the "Office" metadata for the same file. 

Why does data saved in the Powerpoint file itself not show up in the Office metadata panel?  Perhaps I'm misunderstanding what should be visible there . . .

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[Mario]

Which version of Office do you use. Every Office version has different metadata, and there was a huge leap between Office 2003/10 and Office 2013 and between the DOC/DOCX formats.

The tags used in the Office sample metadata panel layout are geared towards "old" Office (the pre-X formats). And these tags cannot be written by ExifTool apparently, because it declares them as read-only (which is why IMatch shows them as such).

Check out the Browser layout in the Metadata Panel to see the metadata available for your Office files.
There may be OOXML metadata, but also XMP data created by ExifTool during import. This XMP data you can update and also write-back.

Basically Office data is writable only in Office (it puts the data in when it saves the document) and ExifTool cannot write most of the native Office metadata. But IMatch can display it and allows you to use the data everywhere, including data-driven categories, filters, variables.

When I find the time I may create an "Office 2013" metadata template sample layout...

[BanjoTom]

Thanks, Mario.  I'm using Office 2007, which was the first of the "x" updates.  I get by very well with the data I can write into the default metadata panel, but was simply curious about the lack of data showing in the Office metadata panel.   As always, your explanation clarifies matters for me. 

[Mario]

I have now changed the default FR layouts. There is now an Office (Older) and an Office 2007+ layout.
The 2007+ layout displays the OOXML (Open Office XML) metadata.
ExifTool cannot write OOXML, unfortunately.

Furthermore, the 'X' formats may contain embedded Dublin Core XMP data (XMP-dc) like Title, Description, Author and such. But since ExifTool can only read but not write the information, changes you do to these 'standard' XMP tags go into an XMP sidecar file IMatch creates. But the embedded XMP data in the Office document takes precedence during the import and thus the changes done to XMP in the MD panel are overwritten when the Office documents are re-imported. I decided to let this one pass because changing the internal logic will be quite a big of work. Unless this is reported as a bug frequently, I can live with it.

In short: Edit the metadata in the Office application, and then use it in IMatch (but don't change it).

[BanjoTom]

I'll look forward to seeing the "dual" Office metadata panels when they show up -- I'm assuming in the next version release of IM? 
Again, thanks, Mario!     You continue to prove that your support for IMatch is far better than that for any other software I've ever used. 

[Mario]

No need to wait. It's real easy to setup a layout which displays the OOXML tags.

I have attached the new Office and Office 2007+ layouts to this post. Just download/unzip/import them into IMatch and you're set.

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[BanjoTom]

THANKS! . . . once again!  It works very well, indeed!