Q: I hate the new tags in Mavericks, need coloured folders!!

I am new to Apple.  I have had MS based PC's for years, mostly because of the cost involved, but I just fulfilled a promise I made to myself that I would get  an apple the next time my computer crashed.  I got tired of the "Blue Screen of Death" and having antivirus software constantly slowing me down and reminding it it was there through update messages and self serving heroic messages saying that they just saved me from some virus or Trojan horse which when I went to look at the details I I got some sort of esoteric information that I didn't understand or even really believe.  But that's enough about me.  What I really want to know is what is the intent of colored tags and what are they used for or what good are they?  Maybe I'm not creative enough to understand something that some people may find useful.

I will accept answers from anyone even friendly insults if you think this question is too sophomoric.

I remain an Apple Fan,

Peohguy

This is what folks had in Mountain Lion

http://www.maclife.com/article/howtos/how_use_mac_os_x’s_labels_organize_your_fi les

This is what Mavericks introduced

http://www.maclife.com/article/howtos/mavericks_howto_organizing_files_and_folde rs_tags

Cheers

Pete

The Tags, as opposed to Labels, allows you to "tag" (i.e. set a keyword) on any file or folder you want.

So, say you wanted to file your business projects into folders for each project, then you'd like to highlight the important files with a single color to indicate some reference, like completed, in work, hot, etc. With labels, you only have the choice of a single marker.

With Tags, you can set as many markers as you want. You can tag the individual files with not only "in work," but also with the names of each employee working on the project, the type of file (eg "Proposal", "Schedule", "Order", etc), and anything else you need.

If you want to see the projects Bill is woriking on, you could search for the Tags "Bill" and "in Work."

If you wanted to organize your photos in the Finder, you could Tag the photos with the names of your children that appear in the photo, the Year, the time of year, other objects or people in the photo, location, etc. Then, if you wanted to search for a specific child at a certain location in a particular season, you could search for that with Spotlight.

Essentially, Tags are keywords you can assign to files allowing you to sort them into whatever bin you wish. You are not limited to one folder hierarchy to isolate the content of the file.

Peohguy wrote:

 

What I really want to know is what is the intent of colored tags and what are they used for or what good are they?

A file can be tagged with a color, or with any name identifier you want.

Tags is just an organization tool.

See: http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-57608892-263/how-to-use-finder-tags-in-os-x -mavericks/

Barney, You gave a lot of info in one Paragraph and it ios quality.  I'm hanging on to this one.

Thanx, Tony.  I like it that a lot of you guys answer fast.

Thanx, I like that I don't have to wait hours to get good answers.

I thought I was hallucinating...but like a Bigfoot sighting...I HAVE SEEN THE COLORED FOLDER LABELS IN MAVERICKS!

The story is true...I was working in FCP 7, and lo and behold...my existing COLORED folder file structure was there in all of its glory when I was in an OPEN/SAVE window!! True story!!

And it turns out, not only is OLD FCP 7 still doing this, but Photoshop CS3 does as well! Like seeing a long-lost friend again...

Tried several other programs, but their open/save dialogues are the newfangled Maverics tags system. Not sure what mojo these older program versions are doing, but seems like tags and labels can truly live in harmony, even when not intended!

I'm running: OSX 10.9.1; FCP 7.0.3, Photoshop CS3. Another element which could be affecting this is that I'm also using Default Folder X 4.6.1 which "handles" open/save windows as well. Maybe these guys have the keys to our salvation!

Just thought people might enjoy a note of "possibilities..."   Good cheer to all, -Alex

I'll post feedback to Apple so that they can remove that

(btw, it's in Excel and Word also)

All of those, including Tony's additions, roll their own open and save dialogs, which means you can't easily find all the files you Tagged to make them easier to find.

Cheddar, you got CS3 to work in Mavericks? I didn't think the Rosetta-compatible versions (CS4 and earlier) would run under Mavericks.

Yep; didn't know there might be a problem with it. It is Photoshop CS3 Extended, version 10.0 and was on my system before Mav, and after the upgrade, still works fine...go figure!

And re: Tony's comment about Word and Excel, my versions are much older Power PC versions and can't run them at all. YMMV.

Thanks, Alancito ... i have done as you suggested above and sent a suggestion to Apple via

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

Most annonying thing about tags is that they consume 30 pixels off the file name. (I wonder how nobody complains about this.) http://i.imgur.com/wpYSgGO.png

Just as everyone here I also hate these tags. Apple should be more carefull about these new useless features.  I was so happy using color folder labels for nearly 8 years.