Problems with Categories (Win)

Manual: v8 - Pages 90-92, v7 - Pages 88-90, v6 - Pages 84-87, v5 - Pages 169-176

"Delete Category..." on the Windows palette fly-out does warn you in a dialog that it will also delete sub-folders but the manual on page 170 doesn't state this. Neither does it explain how you delete a top level folder without destroying all the contents - an unwanted top level Category is quite easy to achieve when cataloguing with the "Path as Categories" option on. The answer: you need to drag and drop the sub-folders up one level.

When creating new Category folders note the tip at the top of page 173 does not work for Windows. Either the feature is not enabled or the white space gap is so small as to be impossible to easily locate with a mouse. Page 173 - new folders, on the PC the process is very different. You don't get the Mac's dialog but rather the new folder pops up on the list with the name 'Untitled' ready to be edited.

The manual implies on page 171 that you can add a folder or folder hierarchy to the Categories palette - this is not true, for Windows anyway. If you attempt this, even with the "Path as Categories" option off, you initiate the cataloguing of the contents of the folders as well as simply adding the folders to the Categories list as intended. Confusing! In fairness - if you read the top of page 170 and the bottom of page 171 carefully you should guess that the first line of page 171 is (unintentionally) very ambiguous.

By comparison, to muddy the visual/usage metaphor further if you drag out of the palette to on OS folder window you initiate the copy of all the records associated with the folder (though not the actual real folders full contents (the two may differ).

The folder order drag and drop as described for Mac on page 173 is not possible - on my Win 2k Desktop client, anyway. Neither can you simply re-arrange folders within a single level alphabetically as in Finder/Explorer. Trying to drag folders either promotes or demotes them a level. It appears - in Windows - that folders of a similar 'level ' get created in order of cataloguing which in turn I believe is based on (one of the) dates of folder creation/update - another fact I've never located in the documentation. Actually, as an aside, stating what cataloguing order is derived from might at least help explain why the default record sort order is seemingly semi-random.

Exporting a job to disk. Page 176, step #3. Wrong! Trying this (Win2k, Windows Explorer window) no such dialog comes up. Worse, testing this I just initiated a 280 Mb file transfer across my network with no warning, no progress bar and the whole lot ended up dumped in C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Local Settings\Temp\ despite dropping the folder into the contents pane of "My Documents" . (Note - I was logged on as Administrator at the time, but still...) Hmm. Not good, and most ordinary users would have just been confused and despite being looked out of Explorer for a bit would not have realised they'd topped up their OS Temp folder. The "Create Disk..." option by comparison does work, popping a "Browse for Folder" treeview folder dialog and correctly copying the files to the location specified.

Question: Problems with Categories (Win) [FAQ00169.htm]
Last Update:- 31 May 2006

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