I have a large group of files, ~350GB, in a Mac Directory. I’ve created an Index to hold the database file size down. And now I’m wanting to document information about many of the files. I can see that DT3 allows editing of many of the available file properties - depending on the file type. And that’s a very powerful feature. And beyond that, it appears that when I edit the information for a file (Title, Description, Comment, etc) that it is appended to the file. I’ve checked this by using Finder>Find feature, outside the DT3 environment. When I use DT3 to edit file properties of indexed files, will that information stay with those files if they are copied or moved to another file location on my Mac system? And is there a simple way to show any of the metadata properties within Finder?
Which properties are you changing? If it’s a property that is already accessible via Finder – comments, tags – then I would expect it to travel with the file. If it’s DT-only metadata, maybe not.
The View → Show View Options command in Finder lets you choose which properties (that Finder knows about) to show.
Use mdls in the terminal to show all metadata. Finder displays only a very limited subset.
And be aware that these metadata are a feature of the filesystem – if you send a file to someone in Windows or Linux, the metadata will not be available to them.
Thanks for the feedback. From what I can see, there are many more metadata fields that OSx is aware of and that are accessible during a finder search, but are not available for finder column headings. So far, when DT3 allows fields to be edited, Mac Finder is picking them up.
I think I understand. What I don’t understand is the mystic missing mapping from one OS to the other. I’m planning on staying with Apple and the rest of the world will just need to either adapt or be lost. 
Still hung up on the file properties that DT3 allows to modify. For example, I can edit all of the fields in the Info>Properties view - for a document I’ve created within DT3, but I can’t do anything for those fields for indexed files, eg video files, I can’t edit any of those fields. I was planning on using DT3 to add Comments and Keywords for the many video files in my index. How can I edit them?
FYI, I find I can add Finder Comments in Annotations and Reminders for the indexed files.
I’m not sure if these properties refer to PDF meta data only or to all types of records. @cgrunenberg would have to elaborate on that.
As to videos etc: I don’t really see the advantage of passing them on to DT. Whatever you add there as keywords etc you can add with other tools and then use spotlight to search for these metadata. I doubt that DT adds anything on top of spotlight’s capabilities for video, audio or images. But I may be wrong, of course.
As noted in the Inspectors > Info Pane > Properties section of the built-in Help and manual, those are not editable for all file types. (Though I need to update the documentation on this.)
Use tags and Finder Comments instead.
Only RTF/RTFD, PDF and image properties are editable but only if the document is shown in the preview pane.
Thank you
Good to know
I think tags would be a benefit, but I’m from the old “flat file” school and they’re not part of my experience. I decided to give them a try but don’t understand how best to get started. When trying to implement “ordinary tags” I hit a road block. The help file, under Tagging, shows that I should choose Data>New>Tag but my drop-downs don’t show that option.
And I don’t see anything particular when Control-Clicking the Tags for the database.
I tried putting a tag on a file of interest in Mac OSX and it showed up in DT3 but that didn’t really help. Makes me think I should just stay within OSx, entering all through the Info interface. Suggestions?
You’re not seeing the option because you’re not in the Tags group of the database.
Why aren’t you reading the Creating Tags and Applying Tags subsections in Getting Started > Tagging > Ordinary Tags? That whole section covers the in and outs of tagging.
PS: Tags are not necessarily hierarchical. That is also discussed in this section.