So let's say you have a ton of files on your Mac and you want to get organized.
Here's an example with only seven files.
Let's say I decide I want to organize these and I'm going to do that by creating folders.
So I'm going to do File, New Folder and I'm going to create Project A. Then File, New
Folder and Project B. I could organize them by saying these three go into Project A and
these three go into Project B and this one, oh no, this one is actually a file that both
Project A and Project B. So what do I do here?
Create a new folder for both or put it in one and hope I remember that it's there or
maybe create an alias.
You know, it can get confusing.
It's hard, sometimes, to organize things by putting them in a specific place and only
that one place.
So let's look at a better way to do it using Tags.
Instead of putting these files in individual folders I'm going to assign tags to them.
I'm going to select these three.
These are part of Project A but I'm going to assign a tag to them by hitting this little
tag button at the top.
I'm going to click red.
I'm going to assign these all the tag red.
Hit Return and you can see they all have a red dot next to them.
These are part of Project B. I'm going to assign those to green.
Great.
So now I've got this file.
This file is for both Project A and Project B. So I'm actually going to assign red and
green to it.
Now you can see I've got both dots there.
So this is great.
But all my files are still in this huge pile here.
Imagine if there were hundreds of them instead of just these seven.
But I don't have to worry about that because I don't need to look at them in a huge pile.
I can actually, in the Finder sidebar here, look for Tags.
Make sure I show it and I can click on red to just see the red ones.
There's the three red ones and the one that tagged both red and green.
I can click green to see the ones tagged green including the one tagged red or green.
So I can go and look at the huge folder full of files or I can just look at them based
on the tags that they have.
But I don't want these to be red and green.
I want them to be Project A and Project B. I can go to Finder, Preferences and under
Tags I can see the red and green and other ones that are there by default.
I can actually select them, click again, and I'm editing.
So now green can be Project B and red can be Project A. Now I see them here listed as
Project A and Project B. Those files are still there and still using red and green as colors
but they're using those names.
If I want to use the colors for something special I can actually click the color here
and change to a different color as well.
So these are both project files.
I can say, well, all my projects I'm going to just use the color red.
So now they're all red as you can see but I do see them as Project A and Project B.
I can select it and click Tags and see which one it is.
This one I click and can see they're both there.
I can also click on one and do Command I and see the tags up at the top there.
There are a lot of different ways to access the tags.
I can Control click and I can see the tags here.
You can see as I roll over them Tag A, B. You remove the one if it's already there and
it's circled.
You can see.
So this one if I select this here and I Control click you can see these two are both circled.
Project A, Project B. I can add another one to it.
Lots of different ways to add and remove tags that can help you organize things.
So tags are very versatile.
You can set them up any way you want.
You can have hundreds of tags or just a few.
I want to show you one other thing here.
You can search using tags.
So in Search up here I can search for Project A and it will come up and say Tags, Project
A and I can find it there.
But I can also use Search criteria here.
I can press the Plus button and I can say Name Matches and instead of Name I can change
that to Other and search for Tags and say Tags Matches or Is project A and then I can
say, also Tags Is project B and it's only go and show me the intersection of those.
So that one file that has both.
But if instead I hold the Option key down and press what becomes three dots here I can
say If Any of the Following are True, and I can do the same thing here, Is project A,
Tags Is project B and then I'll get rid of these two here at
the top.
So now I've got it set where any of the following are true, Tags is either project A or project
B, and I get all of those.
So imagine if I have a hundred tags for a hundred different projects I can say, well
I want to see everything that's project A and B but not all the other projects.
So it will combine them.
Once I've done the Search I can hit Save and I can save this as a Smart folder so that
I can get to it anytime I want.
So I'll Save it that work folder here.
I'll call it Projects A and B, and now when I look here I've got everything here and I've
got this Smart folder here.
I go into that and that's where I can always see them.
That will update automatically every time I add something new to either Project A or
Project B or both it will appear in this Smart folder.
So yet another way that you can use Tags to organize things and have them appear in more
than one place at a time.
It's a much more advanced way of organizing than simply putting everything into a single
folder where it belongs.