Insert a New Column into an Existing Tabular Layout

[moviemaker445]

Have been looking without success in the Help info to see if it is possible to simply insert a New column into an existing Tabular layout in the 'Full Layout Editor' instead of adding the new column and shuffling all the others along. Is there a Cut and Paste facility?
Does anyone know if this is possible?

[sinus]

To be sure, I do not understand, what you want to achieve. 
At least from the help:

In tabular mode you can configure up to 20 columns to be shown in the file window.

[thrinn]

I think moviemaker445 wants to insert a new column between two existing ones, without having to copy/paste each property value for each column.
As far as I am aware, this is not possible. In the Layout editor, Column 1 will always be Column 1. I don't think you can change the order of columns. You can only configure a column, not move it. There is also no Drag&Drop for columns.

[Mees Dekker]

I agree with Thorsten. But nevertheless, it would be nice to have this option (like in MS Excel)

[Mario]

Have been looking without success in the Help info to see if it is possible to simply insert a New column into an existing Tabular layout in the 'Full Layout Editor' instead of adding the new column and shuffling all the others along. Is there a Cut and Paste facility?

No and no. Not possible, sorry.
Since this is the first time ever a user requested this (as far as I recall) I doubt that this is needed.
Tabular layouts are used by less than 3% of the users participating in telemetry.

I actually pondered to remove this layout type.
This would reduce complexity in the File Window code considerably.

It would be easier (and more beautifulerer) to create a new app-based File Window layout (like the Gallery Layout) that shows data in form of a table. This is much quicker and easier to do in HTML and TypeScript than it is using the normal way.

Feel free to add a feature request and if a sufficient number of other users also wants that, I will look into it for a future IMatch version.

[moviemaker445]

Mario, please leave the Tabular layouts in IMatch as I use them a lot. The tabular layout makes it very easy to see the current status of the Metadata for many fields in many files all at the same time.

I struggled for years with DAMs that only offered icon layouts, trying to figure out which files had all descriptions, locations, city, state, and a host of 'Creator' information correctly added. Identifying missing/incorrect field entries with the tabular layout is quick and easy and almost impossible with icon layouts.

Cheers

[Mario]

trying to figure out which files had all descriptions, locations, city, state, and a host of 'Creator' information correctly added

That's a not uncommon task.
Have you considered using formula-based (or data-driven) categories o organize your files by incomplete/missing data?
The IMatch Workflow category hierarchy  already groups files based on missing/existing metadata for common fields. You can extend these categories to check what you consider important.

The Quality Panel in the Dashboard allows you to define and keep an eye on files with missing / incomplete metadata.

I find it easier and quicker to pin all files with "work to do" in one place instead of relying on File Window layouts to "see" it.

[moviemaker445]

Thankyou Mario, for your heads up on the Quality Panel. It's taking me a while to get my head around how it works but, so far, I think it will be really helpful to clean up my metadata database.

At the moment, my data is in such a mess that I need to look at what is in the fields I have used using the Tabular layouts.

Over the years, I have stuffed movie related metadata (eg movie camera settings & presets, Aux Microphone use, Lighting technique etc, etc) into the fields of JPG frame grabs. The fields I chose were dependent on whatever IPTC fields my current DAM would access and also depended on the field length (32, 128, 2000 etc chars).

I think an absolutely brilliant IMatch feature is that I can give the IPTC fields I used, a name that describes the info I put in them - eg "Dublin Core Rights" labelled as "Aux Mic use & setup" - now I don't need a conversion table on my desk to figure out which field I need to find

Could I please add another question regarding Tabular metadata layouts?

I have been converting my 'flat' Keywords into 'hierarchical' ones and using the Layout Editor 'Keywords' attribute in a table, shows the full hierarchical keyword. It is difficult to read this field for a file with many long keywords.

Is it possible to create a Custom Template for the 'Keywords' attribute column that only shows the last 'child' entry of the hierarchy?

[Mario]

Is it possible to create a Custom Template for the 'Keywords' attribute column that only shows the last 'child' entry of the hierarchy?

Yes. We've discussed ways to do this just yesterday in this thread: https://www.photools.com/community/index.php/topic,13084.msg92517.html#msg92517

The trick is to use a custom template and a variable. Since it is not easy (or even impossible) to limit the output of one of the keywords variables to just the part after the last |, the trick is to use the @Keywords category instead for the variable.

Switch one of your columns to custom template and add this variable. Also set the Size to 100 or so, depending on how wide the column is and how many keywords you have used in your files:

{File.Categories|filter:^@Keywords;level:leaf;replace:~;==, }

This variable lists all categories of a file, separated with ;
It uses a filter to filter out all categories which don't begin with the word @Keywords:

filter:^@Keywords

This returns the full category path. So we use the level function to restrict this to the leaf level:

level:leaf

This produces a list of leaf keywords separated by ;
To allow the keywords to wrap into multiple lines, the variable finally replaces ; with ,<space>

replace:~;==,

Since ; has a special meaning in variables we must use ~ to 'escape' it.

I recommend you play with this variable in the VarToy app to see how it works, e.g. start with

{File.Categories}

and then add the other functions one-by-one.
Variables are a very powerful concept and used in many IMatch features.

See Variables for all the info and tons of examples.

[moviemaker445]

I have some movie work to complete but will return and check out your great explanation above in a day or two, as soon as I have this job done.
Thanks