A few years ago a talented gentleman, John Rische, developed and made available a package of MuC display templates. They were (and are) the best I’ve seen and I’ve been using them ever since. One of my PCs somehow lost them as menu items and I can’t remember what it took to install the files so that they appear in the View/Details View Template list.
Would you be so kind as to explain what files need to go where so that the templates appear in the menu?
The “standard” folder for that would be:
C:\Users[USERNAME]\Documents\Music Collector\Templates\
If you’ve changed it in the past, you can check out where it’s hiding by clicking menu Tools > Options > Folders
And then look for “User Templates” - that is where the files should be stored.
They might only show up after restarting the program.
Hope that helps!
I think JR did updates to the template a couple of times and posted them in the Music Collectors group on Facebook.
Any chance of a non-Facebook link to the latest?
I tried John at his last email, but that was from several years ago. Got no response.
Will try to find the latest version on Facebook, so I can post it here.
Thanks Alwin, it would be great to get an update for JR’s template. I’ll keep an eye out just in case it’s found.
I have looked up JHR’s post in the Facebook group, but it appears he never posted the template there. He always sent the template to people by PMs.
So I am afraid I have no access to it.
I have one that works well, but it’s from back in 2016. We can hope that John finds this forum and again generously shares his work.
I got mine to work again from a hint above: I’d forgotten that Tools/Options/Folders set the path to templates. Mine was aiming at a folder that didn’t contain JHR’s files. Fixed now.
Alwin, Thanks for looking.
TinPanFan - Glad you got your old one working. I have an older one as well, been using it for years. JR did an excellent job there, it’s got just about everything. Sure would be nice if he does find this new group!
Ii just saw this thread! I, too, have the template group from JHR. When I get home later this week, I’ll see if I can upload it. It might be from 2016, though.
AJ’s instructions work: just get JHR’s template files into your MuC Templates folder and you should see them as a menu option. I’m glad to say they still work as well as they did in 2016!
You do have to insure that your options point you to the right folder as described above.
So is there a way that other users could get this templates into our folders?
I have JHR’s 2016 template zip file. I’ll ask the CLZ gang now: could/should I make this available to others without John’s permission? As far as I know he sent it to everyone who asked for it, but it’s not mine so I’m hesitant about passing it on.
I have no problems with that.
(other than the fact that it will make it even harder to get you all switching to Connect…)
Guess we file that under “win some, lose some.”
What’s the best way? Send it to you?
I think we’ve long given up getting you over TinPanFan 
In any case, this forum I believe supports some DM/PM system, so you can just try contacting @jmfathletic yourself through that.
Click his/her username above the post they posted, then click Message. I think that should work.
As far as switching to Connect. I would but I like the customization that you have in the desktop version. The feature that would make me switch in both Music Collector and Movie Collector is to be able to link files to your hard drive that plays the movie clips or music files that you have like you can do in the desktop versions. I asked about this feature before, but it sounded like is was a no go. Too bad.
Indeed, scanning files is not something that Connect can do on your computer. In general, a “website” scanning a harddisk is something that would likely pose a lot of security problems (and support - the amount we spend now on the Windows Music Collector support for file scanning is a lot).
Can you tell me more about the customization you have in desktop that you really would want to see in Connect? (based on previous posts here and there it seems that there’s a lot of misunderstanding still about Connect, I’ve seen questions asked like "can I modify my tracks or are they all coming from Core? - where the answer has been that you can actually modify your own tracks of course - Or “can I put in my own creators/characters and modify them” - and the answer is also yes there).
AJ, what might be helpful for those of us reluctant to change from the desktop to Connect would be a clear explanation of the differences remaining today. Obviously you’ve closed many of the gaps - for me the Songwriter field is mandatory, and there was a time that it wasn’t included in the web versions. Of course I understand that that’s not true today, so I wonder what else has changed.
So what is it now that the desktop can still do that isn’t yet available on Connect other than local file access?
Basically, these are the main things that Music Collector does that Connect does not:
Of course, switching to Connect is all about: