FAQ: Searching your database

How can I search for specific items in my data?

There are a number of ways to find that one item you are looking for.

The quick search box

The quickest way is to enter a piece of text into the quick search box in the toolbar. This is the box in the toolbar to the left of the funnel icon(s).

Enter for example "Elvis" to find all albums of Elvis Presley, but of course all Elvis Costello albums will also show up.

Incremental search
You can also use the 'incremental search' function. This sounds difficult, but really it's not. How does it work?

First, in the list click on a column header. As you know, your collection will now be sorted by that field.

Now you just start typing. Start typing the text you are looking for.

An example : you want to browse to the Madonna album "Hard Candy" in Music Collector. First, you click the header called "title". Your albums are now sorted on "album title".

Now you type : "hard can..". You will see that even before you have typed the complete title has Music Collector found and highlighted the album. This is called the incremental search function.

You can reset this way of searching just by stopping to type. After about a second the search will be reset. After that, you can type and the search will start from the top again.

When I make a filter, the AND / OR changes all the time.

If you set up a filter, you can make more than one condition for that filter.

When you do, you will have to specify how the conditions should be looked at.

To give an example :
artist = Madonna AND release year = 1986 will return a different list of CDs than
artist = Madonna OR release year = 1986

Between every two conditions you will have to choose between AND and OR.

Now if your conditions should include both ANDs and ORs, you will have to put brackets around them so the program knows what should be checked first.

To give an other example :
artist = (Madonna OR release year = 1986) AND artist = Metallica will not return the same as
artist = Madonna OR (release year = 1986 AND artist = Metallica)

So brackets are necessary if you combine ANDs and ORs in a set of conditions. This is why, if you do not group conditions, changing one AND into an OR will also change this between other conditions.

To group conditions and put brackets around them, select them in the list of conditions. Use the shift+click method to select. After that, use the "group conditions" icon that looks like (a=).

How can I search for a track by title?

Searching for tracks by simply typing part of the track title in the quick search box of the toolbar (to the left of the two filter funnel icons) and hitting 'enter'. The album that carries the track title you typed part of will be filtered and in the details view of the album.

Alternatively, you can also switch into track mode, using the menu View | Track View, and use the quick search. Music Collector will in that view filter out the tracks directly. Including the album title as a field in the main screen list will allow you to see what album the track is on (View | Columns | Choose columns).