Book Collector Manual
for Windows edition
Welcome to Book Collector Download and Install Navigating the Main Screen Adding Books How to search your Collection Adding Books Automatically Adding Books Manually Barcode Scanning Field Defaults Adding e-book Files Importing from text Managing your Wish List Scanning ISBN Search Settings Editing Books Editing Multiple Books Adding Links and Files List Items and more Update File Links Find Cover Image Managing Pseudonyms Editing List Icons Adding a Box Set Custom Field Names Changing the layout Sorting your Collection Custom Views Edit, Merge List Items Customizing Book Collector CLZ Books for iPhone/iPod CLZ Books for Android CLZ Books HD for iPad Synchronize with Connect Printing a Simple List Using Folders Loan Manager Using the Filter screen Lists for insurance purposes Exporting your collection Database Totals The Options Screen Updating Book Collector Linking your books Print screen Keyboard Shortcuts Creating a Backup Data Submission Guidelines Collection Statistics Validating Book Collector Field Reference
Using the Filter screen
When an incremental search or using the Quick Search box just doesn't cut it, don't give up on searching your books just yet! Meet the Filter screen.
Please note: This feature is only available in the PRO version of Book Collector.
With Filtering you can (hey the name already says it, right?) filter your books on all sorts of details. Be it that you're looking for a book with a specific price (or maybe higher than / lower than) or perhaps from a certain year. Or before a certain year. Ah well, I think you get the gesture of it: You can create a filter for every little piece of information you have added to your database entries.
As you've probably come to expect from Book Collector already, the Filters can be modified completely to fulfill your needs. Let me show you how to get started with the Filter screen.
Creating Filters
Let's open the Filter screen first by clicking the Filter button with the yellow pencil on it. It's the first button to the right of the Quick Search box on the toolbar. Click on "Create / Modify Filter(s)".There you go, the Filter screen! Now let's create a new filter. On the right, you can see 4 filter buttons:
- New Filter
- Duplicate Filter
- Rename Filter
- Delete Filter
Underneath those 4 filter buttons you see a white box, this is where your saved filters will be, always there for you to call on them and use them again.
- Now, click on the New Filter button and give your filter a name. If you want to follow this guide you may want to call it
"Expensive books released between 1985 and 2009". - See the left block? That is where you can set the conditions for your filter. Right now it's set to "Title equals [nothing]". Three columns:
- Field: The field the condition will be applied on
- Comparison: e.g. equals, less then, greater then, before, after, etc.
- Value: What it should look for in the Field.
Setting conditions to your filter
What we want to do is create a filter that shows you expensive books that were released between 1985 and 1995. As you can understand, it is important that you have release years and purchase prices entered for your books to make this work. Still, if you don't have that information entered in your database, you can still try creating this filter.Let's start setting some conditions:
- As you already have the "Title equals [nothing]" condition as a default, click on the word "Title" to make the dropdown menu for Fields appear.
- From this list select Purchase Price.
- Now click on the box that now says "Equals". Use the dropdown menu to select "greater than or equals".
- In the Value box, you can type the value you like. I think 200 is pretty expensive for a book, so I will use 200 in this field.
Now the filter already works. It will show you all your books with a purchase price that is 200 or more if you click OK. But we want to set another condition for this filter. To do this, read on:
- See the buttons in the top left of the Filter screen? Use the left one with the green plus to add a condition to your filter. Click it now.
- Two new lines will appear. One line contains the word "AND" and tells you that a book needs to comply to both conditions of your filter to show after filtering.
- The other line is the same as the first line we edited. Set the field to Release Year.
- Set the Comparison to "greater than" and the value column to 1984 (as we want books from 1985 and up.
A small recap: the filter will now show all your books with a purchase price that is 200 or more AND that were released after 1984. To make the filter even better (to show the books from 1985 till 1995) we need to set one more condition:
- Add another condition with the green plus button.
- Set the Field to Release Year again.
- Comparison should now be "less then".
- Value should be set to 1996 (as we want 1995 included).
Press OK to save this filter. It will instantly show you the results for this filter in your list of books. You can switch this filter off again (to go back to your complete book list) by clicking the filter button without the pencil: It's the second button to the right of the Quick Search box.
To switch your newly created filter back on: Click the filter button with the pencil and select one of your saved filters.
And and Or
Or And or Or. No, I didn't go crazy there, but I just wanted to let you know that in the Filter screen you can choose between AND and OR, to tell your filter to select books that have all the conditions, or maybe just one of the conditions that you have set.For example: in our created "Expensive books released between 1985 and 1995" we may want to lower the conditions a little bit, by telling the filter to use OR between the Purchase Price and Release Year conditions!
- Open up the filter screen again.
- Select the "Expensive books...." filter you just created.
- Click on the word AND that is between the conditions "Purchase Price" and "Release Year", and from the dropdown menu select OR.
- Click OK to save the changes made to your filter, and instantly see the results that now appear on your modified filter.
Book Collector will now show:
- Books that had a purchase price of 200 or more.
- Books that were released between 1985 and 1995.
Advanced Filtering
Yes, there is more! What if you're looking for books that were bought for exactly 10, AND came from Germany OR Spain?Try creating this filter for that:
- Purchase Price equals 10
- AND
- Country equals Spain
- OR
- Country equals Spain
Unfortunately, due to the smartness :) of Book Collector, that will go wrong. It will show you all books from Spain that you purchased for exactly 10, AND it will show you just all books that came from Spain. You would like to say this to Book Collector:
Purchase Price equals 10 AND (Country equals France OR Spain)
Which would make the country selection a separate condition itself. So how do you do it?
- Go back to your filter screen and select the filter you just created:
- Purchase Price equals 10
- AND
- Country equals Spain
- OR
- Country equals Spain
- Now click the word Country, hold SHIFT on your keyboard, and click the other word Country.
- Three lines are selected, and the grouping button becomes available (at the top of the Filter screen, the fourth button).
- Click the "Group selected conditions" button.
That's it! You've just grouped both Country conditions in your filter! It will now filter correctly on:
Purchase Price equals 10 AND (Country equals France OR Spain)