Auto-tagging and add comments on files, emails and bookmarks.
Use Tabbles to tag any kind of file and use tags like virtual folders. The auto-tagging rules enable you to have your files tagged automatically based on their name or content. You can add comments to files and tags and comments are searchable.
Using Tabbles you can categorize your files, folders, internet addresses and Outlook emails by placing them to one or more tags. You can find them by browsing the tags as if they were virtual folders. Tabbles is well integrated into the Microsoft Windows environment: categorization can be done using the usual explorer functions, such as copy-and-paste, drag-and-drop or keyboard shortcuts. Tag up 20.000 files and set-up to 25 auto-tagging rules with Tabbles Basic!
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Reviews for Tabbles 5
I’ve used Tabbles in the past. What everyone seems to be missing in other reviews is that once you have your files “organized” by assigning one or even many tabbles (tags) as needed, it becomes very simple to find and manage them. You only need to assign tabbles to the files you want to manage.
Some obvious tabbles (you can create all the types you want) are filetype (avi, mp4, mp3, jpg, xls, doc, etc.) and file date (doesn’t need to be the actual file date, maybe you want to group scanned receipts or bills by month and year, like 2017Aug, 2017Sep, etc.), but files can be searched and sorted by these attributes in any file manager. You can make tabbles for all the different types of things you create, download and purchase for your PC, like Games, Programming, PhotoEdit, Paint, PDF, System, DiskManagers, Desktop, Documents, MusicCreation, Financial. You could split documents into Spreadsheets, Presentations, Text, Charts, Pictures, Songs, Courses. Split DiskManagers into Backup, Defrag, Partition, FindDuplicates, Virtual. Split Songs into Tab, Score, Demo, Idea, MIDI, Sample, MultiTrack. You could have SongGenre (Blues, Hard Rock, Metal, Country…) or SongKey or SongProgression or SongScale…. You could have a Client table for each customer you create things for, or a Who tabble for each organization you pay money to and a Medical tabble for Checkups, Prescriptions, Emergencies, Insurance, etc. You can assign a PictureCategory to track Vacation, Nature, Friends, Family, Work, Evidence…. You could have a tabble that represents whether a file is created by you, or copyrighted, or if it has DRM. You could create a table for Renewal Date to help you manage subscriptions and licenses, and assign these to small text files with details of the license (free updates for major revision level, no updates, license keys, web or street address).
So now you can find all the pictures of friends that joined you on vacation in 2015. You can find all the demo songs you wrote for your sister’s band, or all the blues songs you recorded as multitracks for your sister’s band that are in key of G and don’t have a I-IV-V progression. You can find all the bills and payments made when you broke your leg, or all medical payments made in 2017 (could be handy at tax time). Doing all this grouping is EXTREMELY EASY and can help you find and group files no matter where they are stored.
I don’t know how well it works for file stored on external drives, and how well it manages file moves (in the past you had to move a file using the Tabbles program, but they were working on how to integrate that better with Windows. Because tabbles uses a database server right on your own PC (or elsewhere if you want), it’s very fast in assigning and searching. It doesn’t store copies of your files, only basic information about the files and what tabbles are assigned to it, and what tabbles you create and if any are in a parent/child hierarchy. You decide what tabbles you want (you can always add and delete and rename then later) and you decide what files to manage and how much detail you want to track.
I found that when I took the time to assign tabbles to files as they were created, this was a VERY POWERFUL tool. I used it at work to manage projects and had categories for customer, project, project phase, APQP Category (I’m in automotive, this is needed for audits, and has about 30-40 things like Measurement System Analysis, Design, Project Timelines, Bill Of Material, and so on). Where Tabbles falls short is when you don’t keep up with the tagging. I get too busy at work to keep up with e-mail and phone calls, so assigning tabbles to my files became a “nice-to-have” that customers didn’t care about, so I stopped using it. Might just start using it at home now! My four-star rating is based on my past experience, no way could I download this today and test it all out before the promotion ends. But if it sounds helpful, give it a shot! Too bad Microsoft has never integrated this in Windows.
There are hundreds of thousands of files on our drives, and organizing them has never been an easy task. Real trouble comes when you may want to see some particular type of files only, or some files related to a task or event like Word documents or Excel sheets.
Tabbles is a useful software utility, designed to help you manage your files and folders, and organize them without having to move them to different folders and different locations on the drive. It allows to tag any kind of file, emails (Outlook), and bookmarks.
Installation & Set-up
The installer is only ~19MB in size, and the installation process takes around 5 minutes or less. The reason for it being a longer installation process is that Microsoft Visual C++ and Microsoft SQL Server are also installed along with the application itself. After launching it, a ‘Login’ window is shown, asking you how you want to set-up and use tabbles. It shows three tabs, namely ‘Tabbles Local’,’Tabbles Cloud’,and ‘Tabbles LAN’. Tabbles Local is for use on a single machine, where as the other are if you need to collaborate with other users and machines. Tabbles Cloud is easy to set-up as it uses the cloud, Tabbles LAN requires SQL server to be set-up which is not easy for most of the users.
Pros
Clean & Easy-to-use UI
The UI is clean and looks somewhat like the Windows File Explorer, and gives you a clear overview of your drives and let’s you browse through directories. The window on the left is Tag browser, and the bigger window views files and folders from the chosen location. On top, there’s a search bar and a toolbar containing tools and options in various drop-down menus.
Customizable Tags & Auto-tagging
As soon as you start using this application, you can start creating you own new tags, with your preferred color and name. Tags can be dates, events, locations, names, or even projects. This ensures that almost all of your files fall into one tag or the other. A single file can be assigned multiple tags too, for example a file can have a date tag along with event or project tag. You can access the files using both the tags or anyone of the two tags.
Moreover, to make life more easier, Tabbles come with an auto-tagging feature. What this does is, it allows you to create a specific set of rules and conditions. Every file/folder that meets and satisfy those rules and conditions, is auto-tagged with that specific tag. But to make sure that auto-tagging is not tagging wrong files, it shows you a notification when it detects a file/folder to tag, and you can choose whether to add it or ignore it.
Explorer Integration
Files can be tagged even without opening the tabbles window, thanks to the context-menu integration. You can right-click on the files and choose to tag them, or you can also locate them in the tabbles in order to find out what tags the files are tagged with. While viewing files in Windows Explorer, the tagged files can be easily found as they have a colored bubble icon.
Moreover, even when you move files around different drive locations, you won’t ever lose their tags. The application auto-updates its database after you move the files around.
Cons
No collapsed view like Windows Explorer
The UI is very clean and easy-to-use, one thing I felt missing in it was the collapsed view of the folders in the Tab browser. This is important so that all directories can be viewed easily in the browser with their folders and subfolders.
Conclusion
Tabbles is a lightweight and easy-to-use software that provides an innovative way to organize, manage, and quickly find your files and folders on the drive. It enables users to assign customizable tags to any file or folder on the drives, local network, or Cloud storage space. This helps organize them into categories, without having to copy them to multiple locations. It is easy to use for all types of users, the only difficulty possible is the set-up of SQL Server for Tabbles on LAN.
Managing your files and folders on your personal computer may determine your productivity. That is why I am always looking for ways to achieve the most efficient file organization. While searching for a program that would help me do so, I came across Tabbles. The one thing that drew me in about this program is its ability to cross-link folders and files without having to move them from drive location to another. Here is my take on Tabbles.
Overview
For an 8MB installation file, Tabbles took longer to install than I expected. If you are using an older version of Windows, you will need to have the dot framework installed for this package to continue with its installation. Otherwise, the program will take somewhere between 5 to 10 minutes to finalize its installation. On launch, the program implements a graphical approach to tagging files and folders, which makes things a little bit interesting.
Pros
Super Easy Auto Tagging
Although you can manually go about the tagging process, Tabbles throws in a new way in which you can do things. Instead of spending more time tagging files manually, I opted to go for the auto-tagging feature. Here, I was able to specific my preferred conditions and features for different usages. In turn, any folder that met my rules automatically got tagged. I also like the notifications each time an auto-tag was initiated.
Editable and Flexible Tags
Tagging a file was pretty straightforward with Tabbles. In addition, the program made it very easy to edit the tag names, as well assign different colors to them. The customizable colors further affirmed the program’s approach to providing a graphical approach to tagging. Further, the tags worked smoothly with the in-built Windows tagging feature.
Small Learning Curve
I have to give props to the developers of Tabbles based on its clean and easy-to-use interface. In turn, the clear arrangement of options from the View option on the top right to the TagSpaces on the top left, you could easily hit the ground running after installing the program without much additional guidance. At the same time, I took advantage of the Search feature to look for specific files that I wanted to tag.
Cons
Inability to Tag Files According to Content
Without a doubt, the auto-tagging feature of Tabbles was very handy. However, there are instances when I wished I could create the auto-tag rules based on the content of the files or folders. With such a feature missing, I felt the less flexibility from that point of usage.
Conclusion
If you are looking for a quick and intuitive way to tag your computer files, Tabbles would be a good fit for that purpose. Its interface and graphical approach to cross-linking tagging makes the process easy. You can also use the auto-tagging feature to save on time. As such, it would be worthy to try out Tabbles.
Read Replies |
Note from the developer: in Tabbles 5 you can auto-tag files based on content B-)
Hi Dennis,
Andrea from tabbles.net here.
Just wanted to let everybody know that since Tabbles 5, your point about “Inability to Tag Files According to Content” isn’t true anymore: Tabbles can now auto-tag files based on words found in their content (it can open over 1000 different file types).
We do listen, yes we do! :)
Tabbles is a simple way to help you keep track of all the common types you have in your computer without necessarily moving them around. The concept behind this simple app is to let you organized data in form of tagged shortcuts and access it from within the application without launching Windows explorer.
At first glance, Tabbles looks like a mundane, or rather inferior replication of the Windows Explorer. You won’t get to appreciate its capabilities until you actually begin tagging and organizing files to meet your own preferences.
Pros
Graphical Tagging and Organization
What sets Tabbles apart is its ability to create colored and cool tags that let you create different identity filings that will help you organize your data better. You can assign a color code to a meaning and will skim through your tags and organized data without bothering to read descriptions.
Brilliant Auto Tagging
The most impressive thing about Tabbles is its ability to auto tag and arrange your files by extension type. The auto tag editor comes up whenever you create a new tag or you can find it in the options tab. I used this to create an automated organization structure that put all new .docx files created to a specific documents tag and put .avi into a movie tag.
The auto tag works like a charm and will always have your file shortcuts aggregated right where you want them.
No Moving Actual Files
The virtual organization concept means that you will instill a directional order without actually moving any file. This is a great solution in shared machines where you want to instill your own order but are not really interested in moving the files and folders from their respective places. Tabbles will create your own custom and virtual world that is organized just the way you please.
A Cloud Storage Synchronization to Cater for Multiple Machines
I found the Tabbles synchronization rules quite efficient on my Dropbox folders that I access from across multiple PCs. The application has an inbuilt function that lets you define similar files that are as a result of cross platform synchronization. This rule will come in handy when deploying this app across multiple platforms
Cons
Not So Seamless an Integration
Tabbles could’ve been better with a more seamless integration into the native file explorer. The idea of creating a separate user interface for such a piece of software whose work is revolutionizing your native file explorer and letting your organize it however way you like isn’t really convenient.
The Additional Resources Could be Bulky
Tabbles will turn your primary PC into a server. This means that it will install a data base (even though it is a minimal version of the Microsoft SQL server, it’s still tangible) and a procedural framework to accessing the server. This makes the software a bit resource angry and a bad idea to people trying to maximize on resources
Verdict
This is a great app if you are drowning in shared files, drives and folders that you cannot afford to physically reorder without affecting the people you are sharing this data with. It could also be a great idea if you have a huge hard drive and want Tabbles to take care of the organization to give you a virtually clean outlook. You must however note that on a personal level, your PC will still be as cluttered as ever since the folders and files remain where they were.
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