How to use Collections

This walkthrough shows how easy it is to create what is called a Collection within FNO3.  A Collection is a group of files or folders from various locations in your PC, yet all viewed as if they were together in one real folder.  When you add a folder into a collection all its contents, including files from subfolders, are included in the collection.  

A simple example to show how a collection works is given below. It demonstrates creating a collection of all the MP3 files on a PC.  On the PC there are over 1100 MP3 files logically grouped into subfolders within a top folder called "songs". 

Step 1)  Create a folder structure within the collections tree.

This isn't essential, but shows how you can create a heirarchical set of folders to store your collections in.

First right click within the collections tree, and select "new folder", then give a folder name.

Step 2) Create a collection.

Right click within the folder and select "New Standard Notes Collection", and give the name for the collection.

Step 3) Drag the folders (or files) into the collection.

Below you can see the folder "songs" being dragged into the new collection.  You can drag as many folders and files as you wish into the collection.  Bear in mind that all the subfolders are automatically included within a collection.

Step 4) View the Collection.

If you left click on the new collection you can see all the contents in the file list.  We have highlighted the "show folders" icon, which has been de-delected so that all the subfolders are omitted from the list, leaving just the files within the collection.  Also you will need "Show All Files" selected if you want to see files that do not have any notes against them.

You can see from the status bar that there are 1116 files within this collection.  So with the inclusion of just the "songs" folder, 1116 files have been found within all its subfolders, and displayed together in a "virtual folder" .

Step 5) Optionally display the Path column.

Because the contents of a collection include all the subfolders, you may want to see these subfolder names.  You can do this by turning the path column on.  This is done by a right click on the column titles and selecting it from the list.

Step 6) Add notes to files

Now you have your collection you can add notes to the files. You could, for example, select a range of files, and then right click on the notes column and choose "Add or Edit Note" to add a note to all the selected files. 

Step 7) Filter for specific files.

 The example below shows how a filter for "Bach and MP3" has been applied.

Step 8) Use Drag and Drop to other applications

The example below shows how a set of files in a collection have been dragged into Windows Media Player, to create a playlist.  Note that the files are stored in a variety of folders across the PC, yet can be dragged just as if they were all in one folder.