Metadata not being displayed in Properties or Pane

Help & Support
1

I have a file for a video game that I'm working on. The extension is .att, .spr and others. In windows xp, I was able to add extensive metadata through the right click>properties>details tab. Including Author, Category, Subject, Title, Comment and others. I am not able to do so in Windows 7, but, the information is still there when I show the specified columns. I had my fingers crossed that DO would grant me access to this data as well as allowing me to add data to my new files. The data IS still there, I am just unable to access it.

Is there an option I can enable to show this information?

Thanks.

2

The Properties dialog for files and folders is part of Windows, not part of Opus, so Opus won't change what you see there.

Depending on how you've added the data/columns, the metadata may display in the Metadata panel, which is part of Opus.

3

So how do I add the columns so that the metadata will display in the Metadata Panel?

4

It'll involve shell extensions. How are you adding them now?

5

Right click on the column header, More..., Columns Tab.

6

Sorry, I had assumed we were talking about completely custom file formats which you had written some kind of column provider for.

What are the file formats? (Not just the extensions but the names of the formats. A quick look for .att on Google didn't find much, unfortunately.)

7

creatures.wikia.com/wiki/Category:File_formats

All they are, are text documents with a different file extension so they will be read by the program properly.

I have found that Microsoft disabled metadata on .txt files within windows 7. These files can be changed to .doc and metadata can be added, then changed back. But with hundreds of thousands of files, this makes for a daunting process. My XP machine refuses to boot, so with further research I found Windows XP Mode, a Virtural PC to run within 7. This was a failed experiment, as the current metadata is un-readable/deleted when transferring from 7 to XP...

Long story short... There has to be a way to tweak windows 7 into allowing full access to metadata for a specific extension, otherwise I wouldn't be able to just change the file extension over to a .doc and back to force windows to show the data I need. I'm currently posting on other sites with just that question.

Can this be done with your program? I am on the trial right now, one of many I've downloaded in my quest to gain the information I need, and I would gladly pay for it just to have access to this data.

8

Hmmm... something seems wrong here. Prior to Office 2007, the regular ".doc" extension format was different than how newer ".docx" formats work in terms of metadata. Not sure exactly where the old ".doc" formats actually stored the sort of metadata you referenced (author, etc) - but on MY Win7 system with Office 2010 installed, renaming a .txt file to .doc certainly doesn't allow me to set the author properties field at all... neither via Opus Metapane (which generates an unknown error) or through the raw SetAttr META "author:Jeff" command... And if I call up the Windows file properties dialog on a TXT file renamed to DOC, none of the fields are editable in the dialog - which I'm guessing is because Windows doesn't recognize the renamed TXT file as a valid DOC format.

Only saying in order to express doubt that even the burdensome workaround of renaming the file even works at all. Doesn't here... but not sure if an older version of Office being installed would change the result here.

At any rate, I don't ~think there's any recourse for you... as it sounds like MS limited us in Win7 with how it ripped the ability for those fields to be applied to TXT files. Bummer... but while not perfect - perhaps you can a "good enough" workaround out of using some other field that still applies to TXT files? Like using the generic NTFS comments/tags field that is not dependent on specific file format?

9

[quote="Bluemith"]http://creatures.wikia.com/wiki/Category:File_formats

All they are, are text documents with a different file extension so they will be read by the program properly.

I have found that Microsoft disabled metadata on .txt files within windows 7. These files can be changed to .doc and metadata can be added, then changed back. But with hundreds of thousands of files, this makes for a daunting process. My XP machine refuses to boot, so with further research I found Windows XP Mode, a Virtural PC to run within 7. This was a failed experiment, as the current metadata is un-readable/deleted when transferring from 7 to XP...[/quote]

Thanks for the extra details. This is different to what I had assumed earlier, sorry.

I think we're talking about storing tags like Author etc. as generic metadata via NTFS alternate-data-streams (not as data stored in the main files themselves), which Microsoft have moved away from. (I saw an explanation that it was because people found the metadata got lost when they moved the files to non-NTFS devices, or archived the files using zip, etc.)

Opus can store a file description for any file type in a similar way, but more structured tagging requires some kind of metadata handler shell extension (except for the built-in types that Opus understands natively, e.g. JPG and MP3).

I've had a look and I can't see a simple way to get the metadata panel to do what you want here, sorry.

10

The Metadata Panel isn't my main concern here. I just need to be able to edit and add authors and whatnot to my files. I'm quite happy viewing the information via columns in the main folder window. I can just no longer add data to new files. I'm not the only person who is struggling to find a solution to this inconvenience that Microsoft has placed upon us. Can you point me in the direction of the metadata handler shell extension that I would need? If you have a solution to this, there are several forums that I would boast your success to, and many gracious people as well.

Thanks a ton for looking into this for me!