The XP User's Guide to Windows Vista, Part 6: Tagging and Stacking

1. Tags and Tagging

Tags are text descriptors for files.  If you have a file that has recipes from last year that your mom gave you, you could assign the tags "mom", "2005" and "recipes" to the file.  Windows Vista could then find the file via those terms regardless of its filename or contents or location.  Other files could also be assigned the same tags, and you'd get the results grouped together when you search.

Tags have been adopted in a wide variety of contexts.  Most blogs, for instance, allow you to assign tags -- arbitrary text descriptors, like open-ended categories -- to given posts.  For instance, if I make a post about Vista, I can assign the tag "Vista" to the post, and use that tag in the future for other posts.  But that doesn't mean I can't add other categories to the same post later on; the categories are not exclusive.

Vista has allowed you to do this with many types of files, through a mechanism that sits between the file system and other programs that can recognize and use tags (the most obvious one being Explorer).  One of the limitations of tags is that they'll only work for certain kinds of files that has a built-in way to allow metadata to be assigned to them internally.  JPEG images, for instance, have this, as do Microsoft Office documents.  But some file formats don't have the ability to receive metadata, and so they can't have tags assigned to them.

The reason for doing this is simple: Microsoft wanted to find a reliable way to have tags travel with files, regardless of where they're stored.  If they were stored as part of the NTFS metadata for the file -- in other words, as part of the file system -- they could get lost if moved somewhere else.

1.1 Tags in Explorer

When you look at a folder in Details view, a column will appear that lists any tags for any of the files listed.

Here, I've already assigned some tags to the files in this folder: wallpaper for files that I use as wallpaper, and okami for files that were gleaned from the publicity images for the video game Okami -- which I'm using as wallpaper, coincidentally enough!

There are several ways to add new tags to a file.  Click on the file itself and at the bottom you'll see a Tags: prompt.  Click on that and you can add tags by simply typing them in.

Another way to add tags (if you're dealing with an image) is to open the file in Windows Photo Gallery and click on Add Tags on the right-hand bar.

Note that if you have an image (or other file type) which does not allow tagging, the right-hand bar in Photo Gallery will not allow tags.  Likewise, the bottom bar in Explorer won't let you add them either; in fact, a Tags: entry will not even show up there.

(Note the "Why can't I edit this picture's properties?" prompt at the bottom right.  PNG format images don't accept tags, so this one can't be manipulated.)

It's also possible to select multiple files in Explorer and then add tags for them all at once.

1.2. Searching With Tags

Once you have items tagged, they'll show up in Vista's search system provided they're in a directory that's indexed for search.  Anything deposited in your user's documents directory will be automatically indexed, so if you're been collecting images in the \Pictures folder and tagging them there, they should appear.

If you open Search and type the name of a tag, you should see matches almost instantly.

Again, keep in mind that the scope of the search you're conducting is going to affect the results.  If you open a folder and perform the search in that folder, you're not going to see anything.

Note that searches from the Start menu do not seem to include tags.  If you want to perform a comprehensive search with tags, click Start | Search and you should get the most comprehensive results.

If you want to search in such a way that you're only getting results matched against tags, use the tag: keyword in front of your search.

This way you won't be distracted by file or folder names that might match your prospective tag.

2. Stacks

Stacks and stacking are something that's not been seen in earlier versions of Windows at all -- except maybe in the sense of a third-party program that provides the same sort of functionality.  Stacks are live collections of files -- ways to organize files by a given tag (or some other criterion, but tags are a handy way to learn about how to use stacks).  If you create a stack by a given tag, then open a view to that stack, it will always contain all the files that have that tag.

Another way to think of a stack is as a kind of saved search view -- a way to quickly bring back everything that matches a given category.  Until you play with stacks a bit, their utility isn't that obvious, but over time they can become powerful ways to drill through whole piles of files and create "virtual folders".

2.1 How To Create Stacks

To stack items in a folder by a given criterion, open the folder and look at it in Details view.  When you hover the mouse over the Tags column, you'll see an arrow to the right of the word Tags.  Click it and you'll be presented with a Sort / Tag drop-down menu.

One of the things you can do in this menu is click Sort or Group to sort (or group) the items in the folder by the listed criteria.  The checkboxes next to the criteria let you filter by the checked criteria, so you can exclude things selectively from the view.

If you click Stack by Tags, you'll see new items appear in the folder that correspond to each tag.  Those are the stacks, created for each tag.  Click on any of those stacks and you'll see the contents of that stack appear.

You can also right-click on a stack and create a shortcut to it, which is another fast way to get to a given stack.  The stack can also be saved in the Searches folder, since it is basically a set of search parameters.

In future installments I'll show you more detailed ways to make use of these functions, but for now the best way to get a handle on them is to take a series of files (JPEG images are probably the best ones to start with) and tag them in ways you find useful.  The more you work with the system, the more comfortable you'll be putting it to use.