Organizing and Grouping Records

Categories and saved galleries provide additional ways to organize your database. Categories are virtual folders that allow you to group and sort records hierarchically; saved galleries preserve record groups and any customized display information (fonts, backgrounds, borders, thumbnail sizes, record order, etc.), allowing you to recover such information quickly.

To create categories, you need administrative-level access to your catalog. Choose Window > Show Categories to open the Categories list.

Click New... to name and add a new category. As you add categories, the Categories list will show them as small, named folders. Put records into categories by selecting the records and dragging them onto one of the category folders in the list. (Records may belong to multiple folders.)

You may also put folders within folders by dragging and dropping within the list. Select a category and drag it onto another category; notice that the first category now appears nested within the second. All records grouped in the first are now also a part of the second (but not all records in the second are a part of the first).

Once you have sorted records into at least a few categories, you can double-click on a category to open a gallery window containing all the records that you have sorted into that category.

Saved galleries work somewhat similarly, though you cannot nest them hierarchically, and the process of adding records to them is very different. To create a new gallery window, choose Gallery > New... or type Command-G. Add records to it by dragging and dropping from other gallery windows, or by opening a category, or by doing a search or a QuickFind. Save the gallery by choosing Gallery > Save... (Command-S) or Gallery > Save As.... (Portfolio will ask you to name the gallery.)

To open a saved gallery, choose Gallery > List or Window > Show Galleries. Select a gallery from either list and click open or double-click the gallery you want.