Understanding and working with tags
Tagging is a popular method to manage digital content. It provides an alternative way to the category mechanism to manage items based on their subjects or nature. However, it's important to understand the tagging concept before using this feature, or otherwise, you can find it frustrating.
First of all, category represent the physical belonging of items. Each item can be belong to one and only one category. You can create nested categories at an unlimited level. Each collection file has its own master category structure. If it helps you to understand, category works like folders and the items you imported works like files.
Tags on the other hand, is a user-wide preference. It's stored in Windows Registry, just like other program preferences. Which means that you'll have only a single tag set, even if you are working with multiple collection files. Tag is actually a text field available in the "Extra" tab in the Edit Item Dialog. Assigning/changing the tag field of an item doesn't affect its physical belonging (category). Unlike categories, each item can have multiple tags, and thus belongs to multiple subjects of your choices. For instance, a movie can belong to both "My DVD Pick" tag and "Comedy" tag.
In order to use tags, first you need to create and maintain your own set of tags. Use the mode selection button in the category pane to switch to the tag mode.
MediaMan will populate the default tag set if it's the first time you used this feature. All the items will be scanned and classified to their corresponding tags. For the items not containing tags, they will be placed into the "Unassigned" folder.
Entries rendered in bold text are called Tag Groups. And the entries under them are called Tags. Right click on a tag group or a tag and click "Insert Tag Group", or use keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Ins to create a new tag group. You must name the tag group at this point to create it. Right click on a tag group or a tag and click "Insert Tag", or use keyboard shortcut Insert to create a new tag sunder the selected group.
Note: You are not allowed to create two tags in the same name, even if they belong to different tag groups. MediaMan will treat duplicated tags as the same.
Assigning tags to items is very easy, you can either select one or more items in the Item List Pane and use the Extra tab in the Edit Item Dialog, or click "Assign Tags..." in the Item List Pane context menu. You don't have to remember and enter those tag names, you can click the button on the right side of the edit box to bring up the Tag Dialog, and select tags from the tag group tree.
Click OK to close these dialogs, and accept the changes. The tag tree will soon reflect the changes you made. You can now view the classified items by clicking their tags. Click a tag group to view items in all tags under it.