How do you add a 'Year' to Folder Details?

[Mango]

Hello :)

 

Not sure if this is possible but...

 

Right Clicking the details tab/header in Windows Explorer, I can see that you are able to add a variety of different display columns such as Tags, Title, Authors etc. There is a choice there to add a Year column which i assume reads mp3 files for their id tags and outputs it to this column.

 

However, I would like to manually add a Year to a folder so I can then sort the folders by Year. (The year is not the date modified/created - its a manually added number)

 

Any idea how this can be done?

 

Thanks.

[TPreston]

Go to the folder the files are in > Right click the background > Sort by or group by > More > Check year > Ok > Right click background again > Sort by or group by > Year

"However, I would like to manually add a Year to a folder so I can then sort the folders by Year. (The year is not the date modified/created - its a manually added number)"

It works by reading the tags from mp3 or mp4 files (preferably reading from the index if windows search is enabled) so it cant be done with folders.

Youll either have to...

ditch the folders and let explorer group the files by year

or add the year to the folder name

or use some program to edit the folders "date created" ntfs property and sort by that

[Mango]

The Year is already in the folder name. However I can't sort the folders by Year because it is at the end of the folder name. eg:

 

Foldername1 (2013)

Foldername2 (1995)

Foldername3 (2001)

 

I'll look into forcing a 'date created' attribute somehow. Thanks.

[Torolol]

theres version of Unix "touch" program for windows, that can change date created attribute.

[Max Norris]

  On 30/12/2013 at 14:07, Torolol said:

theres version of Unix "touch" program for windows, that can change date created attribute.

I've used that method in the past for similar reasons. touch directoryname --date="1/1/2010" and done, sortable by date. Can always create a script in whatever language of choice to parse the years and then do it for you as needed. Using the Year column won't work as directories don't have that metadata.

Another possibility. In each directory, create a desktop.ini file.  (Mark it as hidden afterwards if you don't want the clutter.)  In it, paste the following:

[{F29F85E0-4FF9-1068-AB91-08002B27B3D9}]
Prop2=31,Title
Prop3=31,YEAR GOES HERE
Prop4=31,Author
Prop5=31,Keywords(Tags)
Prop6=31,Comment 

Change Prop3 to the year that you want to sort on. Turn on the "Subject" field. As far as I know the others won't work with a directory, but Subject does and it's sortable. (If somebody has more info that I missed that would be great, not an expert on the desktop.ini files.)  *shrug* it's an option.  Personally I like the "touch" option better, but whatever suits your need better and all that.

 

[Krome]

Check this out :)

 

 

 

 

[Max Norris]

  On 30/12/2013 at 14:38, Krome said:

Check this out :)

It's an excellent idea for media files, but won't work for directories unfortunately which is what he wanted, they don't have metadata to edit.

[Mango]

Thanks Max. The desktop.ini file is probably the best solution as I still want to sort the folders by Modified if possible. It works well. I can create a script to auto create the ini files with the year. :) yay

[Mango]

For anyone that is interested in doing something similar, here is the autohotkey script i created. Run the script, highlight a folder in windows explorer, and press F10. It will create the desktop.ini file in that directory.
 
I noticed that it can take up to a few seconds for the Subject field to refresh with this new value too. So you need to give it a few seconds for the result to show.

#Persistent
#NoEnv
SetWorkingDir %A_ScriptDir%

F10::
Clipboard =
Send ^c
ClipWait, 2, 1
Selection := Clipboard
if Selection = 
Return
Clipboard =
bracket := InStr(Selection, "`(", False, 1)
year := SubStr(Selection, (bracket+1), 4)
FileDelete, %selection%\desktop.ini
FileAppend,`[`{F29F85E0-4FF9-1068-AB91-08002B27B3D9`}`]`nProp2`=31`,Title`nProp3`=31`,%year%`nProp4`=31`,Author`nProp5`=31`,Keywords`(Tags`)`nProp6`=31`,Comment, %selection%\desktop.ini 
Return

[riahc3]

Hello,

  On 30/12/2013 at 13:38, Mango said:

Hello :)

 

Not sure if this is possible but...

 

Right Clicking the details tab/header in Windows Explorer, I can see that you are able to add a variety of different display columns such as Tags, Title, Authors etc. There is a choice there to add a Year column which i assume reads mp3 files for their id tags and outputs it to this column.

 

However, I would like to manually add a Year to a folder so I can then sort the folders by Year. (The year is not the date modified/created - its a manually added number)

 

Any idea how this can be done?

 

Thanks.

Well I was gonna suggest "datecreated:2013" but all you want to do is add a tag then...

Sadly, in Windows, folders are folders while in unix, folders are files so metatags cannot be added to them in Windows....

The reason desktop.ini works is because that file is used to keep a folders layout view and its parameters. Since it is a relation to the folder, you can add anything to it and it will be information about the folder.

[TheRuan]

I know I'm bringing this topic back from the dead, but since i did quite a bit of research and found not a single success in this subject i decided to share this solution with you guys. It's quite simple actually.

Desktop.ini is where folder metadata is stored so we need to create a file like that using the correct information inside, creating each file is a bit tricky i will probably end up creating a script to read the data from the first file on the directory and apply to the ini file, here is one example:

Source for details:

Schema

[{F29F85E0-4FF9-1068-AB91-08002B27B3D9}]
Prop2 = 31,Title
Prop3 = 31,Subject
Prop4 = 31,Author
Prop5 = 31,Keywords(Tags)
Prop6 = 31,Comment
[{56A3372E-CE9C-11D2-9F0E-006097C686F6}]
Prop4 = 31,Album Name Test
Prop5 = 31,2000
Prop11 = 31,Pop

All the above were tested on WIndows 10 x64 and are fully working.