Display the SAME attributes for ALL items in a db? Display user attributes there?

[Spliff]

1)

There is the pane "Item Attributes"; in this pane, the displayed categories ("date created, flag, has children, icon", etc.) CHANGE with selected item; I want this display be normalized, i.e. the SAME for ALL items (existent items, and new items).

Thus, I searched for all items ("*"), then selected all search hits in the search results table, then openend Tools-Options-Attributes, "checked" the attributes to be displayed, and selected "Apply" and "OK";

I also did the same with the Template "Text" (which is the common template of all my items).

To no avail: The columns displayed in the "Item Attributes" pane (of the db in question) CHANGE with the selected item, and some of the system attributes are NOT displayed (i.e. not even the column, with empty value column, is displayed).

2)

I understand that in the dialog Tools-Attributes (different from the above-mentioned one), I can create new (user attributes), and I have also listed some "system" attributes which might be of interest to me:


in particular "system" attribute "Date Completed": This is checked as "System" there, so I would like it to be displayed in the pane "Item Attributes", since - see my other thread - I would "abuse" it for "original press-clip date"; this should be possible, since "Completed" would imply that I can fill out this data field manually?

Or the non-system attribute "Date Picture Taken", to be displayed in the "Item Attributes" pane, for ALL of my items?

ANY date (or even numeric or text) field would do, and which then would
- editable by me, and
- be displayed within the "Item Attributes" pane.

3)

As said in 1), some fields are NOT displayed, among them (all of them "checked" for display) "Item Notes", Indent Level, Keywords (just Keyword Count), Lineage, Pending Reminder, Sync Date, Tree Order, and, as said in 1), for many items, very few attributes are displayed, without the attribute column being displayed (and then the value as empty: not even that).

Can you help please?

[kinook]

The Item Attributes pane will only display attributes that actually exist for an item. If an item doesn't have a particular attribute, it won't show (because it doesn't exist). You would need to add that attribute to the item for it to display in the Item Attribute pane for that item.

If you add an attribute to a template item, that attribute will be created for every item of that template that you create after that (but it won't add the attribute to existing items of that template).

If you want a particular attribute to show for every item, you would need to add the attribute to every item that doesn't already have that attribute. You can do this by doing an advanced search on <Attribute> Not Exists, selecting all of the search results, going to the Item Attributes pane, and inserting the attribute.

Tools | Options | Attributes is used to specify which attributes (that exist for an item) will be displayed (or not) when the item is selected. It doesn't create item attributes that don't exist.

[Spliff]

Thank you very much for your kind help, Kyle.

I have problems with two different concepts:

- add an attribute to an item
- add a value to a specific attribute of an item.

Here, my problem is the first one, and AFTER your very kind help indeed, I now was sure at last WHERE to try for the solution of my problem.

I understand now that for a selection of several items, I just get the "Item Attributes" = columns which are present in all of the selected ones, and I just get values when they are common to all items in the selection.

Since you say, "going to the Item Attributes pane, and inserting the attribute.",

I now have - finally, after ONE YEAR! - discovered how to add new attributes, the right-click "Insert" command in the "Item Attributes" pane being "the one", oh-my-God!

So many times, I had scrutinized, in various technical situations, that context menu, for some command to add new attributes (i.e. columns, not values), without "getting it", why?

Because, when the Item Attributes pane is selected, one of the entries there is selected (more or less: "active" or "selected", and it gets "really selected" upon rightclick into the pane, even beneath the list!), and that "Insert" command is in that very first group (!) of 3 other commands - you put a divider line beneath that group - which obviously affect the selected item: Edit - Insert - Delete - Properties:

Automatically, I assumed then that "Insert" was for assigning new values to choose from (whilst "Edit" was for changing the current value), for the selected item:

obviously, the "Insert" command does NOT belong to that group, which should then have 3 items, not 4! ;-)

And once the user "gets" that, it all falls into place indeed!

I admit that in the help item "attribute assignment" = "Assigning to info items", you correctly wrote, "Hit the Insert keyboard key (or use Edit | Insert from the menu)", but by searching hours and hours over multiple help items, all for "attributes" (in this case), I regular come to the point where I then start to overlook help which is there, just by "search overflow" or whatever you may call it.

So, "Insert" should have been called "Insert new attribute", and should have got its own "group", but yes, I could have found it in the help, I just didn't, sorry!

Now, this is the decisive step ahead, so I'll be able to try out lots of things, bothering you then again just AFTER lots of new discoveries. ;-)

Thank you so much, Kyle! (You imagine to what degree I was stuck!)


EDIT:
The conceptual misunderstanding for all this being: The Item Attributes pane's selection displays one selected ATTRIBUTE, whilst the selection in the "Search Results" list displays one or multiple items ITEMS, and thus the other three commands within the very first group of your context menu apply directly to the selected attribute (and there, as said, always is a selected one), whilst only IN-directly applying then to the selection within the search results - but "Insert" applies to the selected items, without first applying to the selected attribute; I think this more precise explanation will much better explain why this command should not be grouped together with the other three ones, all the less so in its current, too concise wording.