OpenMeta tags and Mavericks question

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OpenMeta tags and Mavericks question

I have not upgraded my older Mac to Mavericks because I have thousands of files and folders tagged using openmeta software such as Tags (love the ease of tagging) and Tagit (love the way it displays results in a finder window). I have read various things on the Internet about how Mavericks handles previously issued openmeta tags, including everything from it automatically converts existing tags to Mavericks tags (http://blog.macademic.org/2013/12/11/smooth-transition-from-openmeta-to-maverick s-tags/), to various running scripts being required to convert. I know some software such as HoudaSpot searchs both Openmeta and Mavericks tags. Can anyone clarify what will happen to my existing openmeta tags if I upgrade from Mountain Lion to Mavericks? Additionally, I have hundreds and possibly thousands of files labeled with colors indicating files that are important, business, home, etc. What happens to those labels upon upgrading to Mavericks? I'm nervous about losing all that work and will, of course, back everything up before upgrading.

Message was edited by: Couchcowboy Corrected punctuation.

iMac, OS X Mountain Lion

Posted on Oct 11, 2014 11:07 AM

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Answer 1

Couchcowboy Author

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Oct 14, 2014 12:26 PM in response to Couchcowboy

Gee. I never imagined that no one would have any experience with migrating tags to Mavericks at this point! Anybody?

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Answer 2

Couchcowboy Author

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Oct 16, 2014 5:53 AM in response to Couchcowboy

Really? There's no one who has any knowledge about Maverick tags and how Mavericks (or Yosemite) deals with openmeta tags?

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Answer 3

Couchcowboy Author

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Oct 16, 2014 6:57 PM in response to Couchcowboy

Anybody? Anybody?

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Answer 4

Couchcowboy Author

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Oct 22, 2014 10:54 AM in response to Couchcowboy

Are you kidding me? No one has any experience with upgrading from Mtn Lion to Mavericks/Yosemite and had used open meta tags prior to upgrading?

Man, I expected someone with more smarts than myself would be all over this pretty simple question/s. Guess not. Oh, well.

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Answer 5

Dec 13, 2014 8:29 PM in response to Couchcowboy

I've been wondering the same thing myself. I just did a search on these issues and came across your original post. I was encouraged as I read it -- you clearly understand the issues, and you articulated your concerns quite clearly.Like you, I want to understand the pros and cons of open-meta vs Mavericks/Yosemite tags.

I don't have all the work invested like you do, but I am progressing with going paperless using a ScanSnap ix500 and Yosemite, and either ABBYY Finereader or Acrobat for OCR. If I am going to shred paper, I want to be **** sure I have backed up the e-copies. I also want to know that Spotlight has them indexed based on title, content, and tags, and that my Spotlight searches will find them wherever they might be located on my computer.

For example, I'd like to know how Evernote and Dropbox handle both of these (receiving files from, storing files, and returning files to my Mac). EN clearly has internal routines OCR, and for adding tags. Search routines then utilize the tags and OCR contents, but as I understand it, this only works within EN itself. Documents that are copied from EN back to the computer lose the EN tag/search capability. I understand Dropbox does retain tags. I can't remember whether this referred to open-meta or Yosemite tags, or both, and haven't had time to run the tests.

Similarly, I want to understand how various off-site backup processes handle them. I have been using Backblaze for a few months, and read recently that it does not preserve tags. As with DB, not sure of details. Also not sure about CrashPlan or other options.

In summary, I believe you asked exactly the right questions, and the lack of response indicates a broad lack of understanding throughout the various user communities. These concepts seem to be evolving piece-meal, with few if any standards, a lack of coordination among vendors, and an almost complete lack of guidance, support, or documentation from anyone.

Maybe we can communicate privately and see if we can sort some of this mess out.

Ed Gallaher

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Answer 6

Couchcowboy Author

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Dec 23, 2014 7:54 PM in response to edfromhillsboro

Ed,

Thank you for taking the time to respond to my question! I haven't looked at this thread in a while because no one seemed to be interested. I'm wanting to upgrade my computer, but still fear losing all my thousands of tags and labels. Have you found any additional information?

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Answer 7

Couchcowboy Author

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Dec 26, 2014 7:32 AM in response to edfromhillsboro

Ed,

Wanted to let you know that I researched and experimented (moved some tagged files from my Mtn Lion computer to my newer Yosemite computer; Spotlight found tags just fine on new computer) and made the leap to upgrade my older computer to Yosemite from Mountain Lion. I am pleased to say that all my tags are working and even my two main tagging aps still work fine (Tags and Tagit)! My colored labels still work, although they are now small dots, as expected. Have a few glitches to deal with in other areas (MenuEverywhere launches, states I need to enable accessibility, and opens the wrong System Pref; Ap Store made me enter my password fourteen times to upgrade seventeen aps; takes FOREVER to boot up, etc), but overall pretty pleased with how much better it works. Yosemite fixed a big annoyance of mine in that Preview will now open all selected files in a single window without opening previously opened files in a separate one. I find searching with Tagit works better for me than Spotlight when looking for specific tagged files, but Spotlight works, just a little differently, and it does find the tags.

I can't answer your question about Evernote, and will be researching how CrashPlan handles tags, since that's what I use. I think it does keep them, as I recall. Don't know about Backblaze.

Hope this helps.

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