How to change hierarchy in keywords

[Mees Dekker]

Since the new face annotation method (batch detection) became available in 5.7.2, I decided to start using keywords for persons. After I got a number of names of persons as keywords, I decided that these flat keywords should be organized in groups like friends, colleagues, family, etc.

I tried to do that by creating the new groups in my keywordthesaurus and then move keywords up or down into the new created groups. No luck here: the buttons and contextcommands for "move up" or "move down" are greyed out. Drag and drop does not work either. Surely this must be an easy thing to do, but neither in the helpfiles, nor in this forum I could find an solution.

My question here is: how do I introduce a hierarchy into an existing thesaurus and then move existing (flat) keywords into the new hierarchy? Who can help me out on this?

[Mario]

Keep in mind: Changing your thesaurus will not change the keywords in your files.
The thesaurus is just a central store for "text", enabling you to create thesaurus data for all metadata tags, including keywords.

To change all files with the keyword "Susan" to WHO|Person|Susan:

1. Select all files with the keyword "Susan" (easiest: Category View, @Keywords category).
2. Remove "Susan" and add "WHO|Persons|Susan" in the Keyword Panel.

Done. If you have set the Keyword Panel to automatically update the thesaurus when you add new keywords, the new keyword hierarchy will be added automatically.

In the Thesaurus you may want to check if WHO is marked as a group level - it usually should be. This way WHO does not become part of your keywords.

[Mees Dekker]

Mario,

thanks for the very swift reply (as always). I did find this solution myself, but was hoping for a somewhat easier trick to exist.

It also makes clear to me a major difference between keywords and categories. Changing the hierarchy in categories is very easy to do (insert a new one and then drag and drop old categories); to do the same in keywords involves deleting the old keyword and adding a new one (as you pointed out in your reply).

Since I'm the kind of person that cannot foresee all my needs for the next couple of years (I'm likely to be the only one in this world, am I not? :-) ), this would also mean that I'll probably be very busy deleting and re-introducing new keywords (i.e. introducing an extra level of grouping, like splitting colleagues in "current colleagues" and "former colleagues"). Categories on the other hand are very easily managed, moved up or down the list, renamed, etc. Categories are much easier to organize my database/pictures than keywords. So after all: I will stick to the categories.

This illuminates, once again, the power and versatility of IMatch over other applications/programs!

And: if for some reason somebody needs to have some of my categories as keywords: no sweat. Ferdinand explained in detail how to do that, back in 2013/2014 (see: https://www.photools.com/community/index.php?topic=312.msg1653#msg1653 and https://www.photools.com/community/index.php?topic=3428.msg22482#msg22482)

[Mario]

The @Keyword category hierarchy is special. You can copy move files between keywords by doing that in the @Keyword category hierarchy. IMatch then updates the keywords in your files accordingly. See the help topic for  @Keywords which explains how to add/remove keywords, move files between keywords, Dragging and Dropping files to update their keywords etc.