Quick Search in the Subfolder names

[Peter G]

Hello,

Just turned to XnVeiw MP from many years of using FastStone Viewer only because of the "Show files in Subfolders" feature that is missing in FastStone.

But why the Quick Search function does not search in the Subfolder names? It was so frustrating to discover that!

I just simply use the folder names to separate the images, most of the people do it in the same way without any Categories or Ratings or Color Labels. Naming every single file is also not an option - you just put your files in a folder, name the folder, and that's it..

The inclusion of the subfolder names in Quick Search would make XnView an excellent thing, as with the file names the
Quick Search is excellent!

🫶

[Peter G]

As a workaround I used the ExifTool to insert the folder name into every image XMP Subject tag using this command:

ExifTool -overwrite_originals -r "subject<directory" PARENT_DIR

Now the Quick Search works as it should.

[michel038]

Yeah .
And you can use Tools >Open with > Configure programs to add this Exiftool function

So you can select photos from within XnViewMP, right click, open with ... and update xmp subject for new added photos

[Peter G]

Good idea!

My workaround is impractical as all 30,000+ images have to be loaded first into the XnView every time to search among them...

I still remember French, will check your Catalogueing!

The best would be just to use the free "Everything" app for search in filenames with thumbnails as a view.
Would be nice to have a search inside XnView similar to that of Everything https://www.voidtools.com/

[michel038]

Another workaround (2) :
- Create a new category : Folder
- Click a parent folder on the left side of the browser, select all folders on the right side, check "Folder" in the Categories pane (and de-select them ! !) , so all these folders will have the category "Folder". Repeat untill all subfolders are categorized. I have more than 1000 folders, and it took less than 10 min to do this.
- In categories filter, select "Folders", then quick search will work on all subfolders names.

Another one (3) (two levels hierarchy) :
- I added a descript.ion file in the parent folder at the top of the hierarchy, where each 1st level subfolder is described with all it's sub-subfolders names.
- I used a batch to create this big descript.ion file
(With the help of chatgpt, asked him to create a out.txt file with "folder" subfolder1 subfolder2 ... subfolder N ... lines. T
Edit: This is the .bat file :

Code: Select all

@echo off
setlocal enabledelayedexpansion
if exist out.txt del out.txt > nul

set "root_folder=D:\Photos"

for /d %%a in ("%root_folder%\*") do (
    set "year=%%~nxa"
    set "subfolder_list="

    for /f "delims=" %%i in ('dir /b /ad "%%a"') do (
        set "subfolder=%%~nxi"
        set "subfolder_list=!subfolder_list! !subfolder!"
    )

    echo "!year!" !subfolder_list:~1! >> out.txt
)

echo You can edit and clean "out.txt" file , and save it as "descript.ion"  in %root_folder% folder.
pause

- With this description, a simple word (Paris ) in quick search will find the folder (ex 2013) where a subfolder containing this word exists in the descript.ion file (ex Travel_in_Paris)
- Open 2013 Folder, and type again Paris will show this folder ...
-To see the right format for descript.ion files, select any folder or file, Ctrl D, enter a short description in the description field, write ...

[Peter G]

Hi! Thanks for advice!

But the folder trick will work only on the PC where it was made, if I open the folder from another PC I need to repeat this Cataloging again, and the xml export-import will not help.

I found that writing the folder name into the tag is already provided in XnView and you don;t need to learn ExifTool - I open all subfolders, wait untill all the images load, then select them all with Ctrl+A, call the IPTC dialog window with Ctrl+I, and assign the folder name to one of the tags!

[Peter G]

Dear Michel,

I started to read your manual and installed Picasa... What else man can dream about! There is just everything one needs! The just impecable search and interface!!