Managing categories / categories data pane stays empty

[GMG]

Hi together,

I've just started looking at XnView MP for organizing my photos. In general it looks great but the categories drive me crazy.

So first of all I activated the following settings concerning Metadata:
"Import XMP...", "Export DB...", "Create XMP...", "Read...", "Write...", twice "Export..."

Ok, so now when I right-click on an image and go to "Edit IPTC-IIM/XMP" I can add categories and keywords and they also appear in the XMP view of the photo later on and I can filter for them in quick search.

However the categories data pane as well as the category sets data pane stay empty. I would have expected my categories to also appear here. According to the manual (https://www.xnview.com/download/XnViewM ... inners.pdf) I could just right click on the pane and add categories there. Nope. Rightclicking doesn't lead anywhere.
Even when I go to "Categories filter"/Categories and rightclick there I get the option "New category". However clicking that option doesn't lead anywhere.

I've seen plenty of screenshots showing me all kinds of categories in the category data pane and categories filter (for example manual page 9). How can I get that?

I'm using version 0.93.1 64bits on Windows 10.

Thanks!

Cheers
GMG

Since my second post containing screenshots disappeared here they are:
My settings:

Editing the image metadata

XnView showing the images properties but with empty "Categories" data pane - shouldn't it contain the categories we can see in the lower left section of the screenshot?

No categories within the category filter:

Quick search still works:

But filtering for the Rating (4) doesn't lead to any results:

Would be great if someone could tell me what else is required to make the "Categories" data pane as well as the "Categories Filter" work .

By the way:
Running "View/update catalog from files" or adding folders to the catalog in Settings makes XnView process something, but in the end nothing changed and the "Cached directory" list stays empty.

[GMG]

Found the solution.

By default XnView is installed in the programs directory (which is totally fine), but also stores the database in this directory (which is a really bad idea) and doesn't inform the user if it can't access the database (which is a even worse idea).

The quick fix is stating the program with admin permissions (which is generally a bad idea) or installing it in a different, non-protected folder.

But I consider this as two serious XnView bugs:

• Users should be informed if reading/writing the database failed and it shouldn't just fail silent as right now. That's very bad practice.
• User data should never be stored in the program data folder on somewhat recent Windows installations. Store the database where it should be stored. See e.g.: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/window ... rogramdata or https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/patric ... -versions/

[xnview]

By default XnView is installed in the programs directory (which is totally fine), but also stores the database in this directory (which is a really bad idea) and doesn't inform the user if it can't access the database (which is a even worse idea).

No, by default database is stored in user's data. Do you have changed something at installation?