Friendly Names for Category Bookmarks

[JohnZeman]

I'm curious if anyone else would find this very useful too so I'm creating a feature request about it.

I use category bookmarks a lot to jump to different categories and they work great for that.  What's not so great is knowing which bookmark goes to exactly which category because my category names can be quite long making them much wider than the bookmarks panel can display without scrolling back and forth.

So I would love it if category bookmarks had a friendly names option like the folders do.

Anyone else?

[Mario]

Have you considered using Category Favorites?
These use the last category name by default and are thus much shorter. The full name is displayed in the tool tip on hover.
Right-clicking a category favorite allows you to go to the category via the menu, like a regular category bookmark. Or just use <Alt>+click>.

A way to solve this would be to use the last category name only for bookmarks (e.g., Where|Country|Germany => Germany) and maybe display the full path in a tool tip...?

Not sure how many people have this problem.
I actually pondered removing the separate folder and category bookmarks in favor of favorites.

[ubacher]

I agree with Mario: Category favorites are the way to go. These you can rename and color code, and group by using Placeholders.

I also use favorites in place of bookmarks for folders which I frequently work with.

[JohnZeman]

Apologies, I wasn't clear in what I was looking for. 

I have considered and have used category favorites to jump to regular categories, I should have mentioned the categories I'd want to go to for this are all data-driven categories such as

Chronology|2000-2099|2010-2019|2011|Pacific Northwest

There is no go to for those.
Currently I'm using a custom app to jump to those data-driven categories but I have to keep modifying the app each time a new data-driven is added.

[thrinn]

You could create an Alias category for your data driven category. Alias categories can be used in the Favorite panel and, of course, also as category bookmark. As you can name them to your liking, you could use shorter names or just the last one or two levels of the original.

The disadvantage is that you would jump to the Alias, not the "original" category itself. And you would have to manually create aliases for all categories you want to bookmark, but I think would be necessary either way. It might be easier and more "standard" than having to change an App.

[Mario]

Due to their inherently volatile nature, some things won't work directly for data-driven categories. The cannot be dragged, for example.

But there is an easy trick:

1. Create a favorite from a normal category
2. Select the data-driven category and press <Ctrl>+<C>
3. Open the properties of the favorite created in step 1
4. Replace the category path (in the Categories property) with the name of the data-driven category (select, then paste via <Ctrl>+<V>)
5. Change the name, color etc. to your liking
6. Close with OK

[JohnZeman]

Mario I must not be doing something right because your trick doesn't seem to work for me.  But that's ok because Thorsten's suggestion will do just exactly what I was wanting to do.

Thorsten you're right that's it's going to take me a fair amount of time to set this structure up but that's ok.  Once I have the alias branch constructed and configured it'll be done and I'll never have to do it again.  Then I can use either category favorites, or I'll more likely just click on the alias categories to quick jump to those data-driven categories.

I knew I was asking the right people.

Thanks for all the feedback guys!

[thrinn]

Mario's trick works for me. Just make sure to paste the category name/path of your data driven category (step 4) into the "Categories" field of the favorite properties, not the "Name" field.

[JohnZeman]

Thanks Thorsten, I had indeed pasted the full category into the name field.
I'm still rather partial to using category aliases though, I'm liking the way this is coming together now.
Thanks again guys!