Categories not functional

[Adam C. Morrissette]

Hello,

I am having issues searching by categories. (Not Keywords) I created a category heirarchy in Spreadsheet and then Imported it into the program via .txt. and the categories/hierarchies seem to work just fine. I can add categories to Images as I browse through the program, as I assign the categories, they show up in the "Category Sets" pane for each photo. But I am having one *BIG* Issue. Use of this program is completely pointless for me if I cannot search for particular categories. I use the Search Function (Ctrl+F) to call up the search pane, select categories, type in the various categories I wish to search for, hit search, and Nothing. I know that I have assigned the categories that I am trying to search. I have no Idea why it isn't working. I have tried numerous things to try and fix the issue, such as closing and reloading Program, Rebooting PC, Updating Program to latest version, toying with the various search options, and still nothing seems to work. I am including some screenshots of my Hierarchy as well as my search set up.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[xnview]

Do you use 'export category to XMP' settings?

[Adam C. Morrissette]

Do you use 'export category to XMP' settings?

No, I can't say that I have. I looked around in the drop down menus, as well as right clicking selected photos and looking for export category to XMP, and I can't seem to locate it. Where would it be?

Thank you for any help.

[xnview]

could you post a screenshot of Settings>Metadata? You assign some categories to files and make a search?

[CameronD]

A couple of questions for you..

1. Your example is starting the search in folder "workfile". Are the images you expect to find under that top level folder?
2. Have you defined a basepath under options->Catalog->Catalog. I found a bug in this a while ago, posted here, where searching did not find any file that was stored in the DB prefixed by the basepath.
3. I recommend always configuring XnViewMP to save catalog, etc data to the image file. That way: a) you do not lose all your data if DB corruption occurs (or you move/rename the files), and b) other programs can see your metadata.
4. In case you did not know - the DB categories are paralleled by IPTC keywords, not IPTC Categories. As far as I understand the latter, they are a predefined, immutable list of codes and are rather useless outside newspaper work.

If you want to search ALL your images, try using the catalog filter, mine is usually hidden under the folder tree in Browse mode.

[edit: link to the previous bug report]