Is there a way to sort by Title Sort and Box Set so that the box set items are alphabetized by box set title within the rest of the entries? I know I can force that to happen by editing the Title Sort field of each individual item to match the box set title, but I would like to avoid that if possible.
Also, are there any plans to create nested box sets? That would eliminate this whole issue. The ideal situation is to have 1 main entry for the box set profile, with child profiles for each item in the box set, and be able to set that main box set entry to count for as many titles are in the box (or be set to 0 while the individual items count as 1).
For example, I have several of the Forbidden Hollywood DVD sets. Right now, my only 2 options are to have the box set count as only 1 movie, which is obviously incorrect, or to have the individual movies alphabetized all over the place. Neither option is good. Perhaps you could just make it so entries can count for a user-defined amount. That would be a reasonable solution too.
I can’t be the only collector who would like this. I’m honestly pretty surprised it isn’t already an option for storing box sets.
No, not exactly. You’ve done what I said could be a laborious and undesirable workaround. You’ve altered the Title Sort field to force the alphabetization. I’m asking if there is a way to avoid that.
For example, the Forbidden Hollywood: Volume One box set includes 3 films:
Baby Face
Red-Headed Woman
Waterloo Bridge
Individually, they will alphabetize under “B”, “R”, and “W” respectively. I would like to sort them all by the box set title “Forbidden Hollywood”, under “F”. I’m asking if there is a way to order the sort fields to make that happen. I was unable to accomplish it myself.
It’s disappointing to me that there isn’t a built-in function to keep box set titles together without forcing them to count as only ONE entry.
I guess the way I’ve been doing this for many of my box sets will not work for you. However, you could combine your Box Set’s name with the Film’s title in the Title Sort field and get what you seem to be looking for. But its more work.
At the end of the day, it’s not very likely CLZ is going to change Movie Collector anymore, they are spending all their efforts on Movie Connect and CLZ Mobile. So, you have to find work-arounds.
The point is to integrate the box set titles into the full alphabetical list but under the box set title. It appears that’s impossible without going through each individual title and setting the Title Sort filed to the box set title. So be it. I’m going to plod along for a little while longer, but, unfortunately, I’m starting to think there are too many features missing and way too much content missing for this to be viable software for me.
Just out of curiosity for maybe working this into our Web app Movie Connect/mobile app CLZ Movies, what exactly would you like to happen (and would this be like a button? A feature you can toggle on?)
You’d want a button to automatically put in the “box set” name in front of the “title” inside the “title sort” field?
It would mean that
Baby Face
Red-Headed Woman
Waterloo Bridge
Would sort with the “F” of “Forbidden Hollywood”
I would also mean that if the third film of that box set starts with an “A”, it would sort with the F, and then you FIRST see the movie with the A in there (so not in the original box set order).
If that is what you would like, then you’d have to change the sort title field - I understand you don’t want to do that work - so would you like want a button for that or something like that?
I did think of a couple of “solutions”"
(1) would be to export everything as a CSV, and then do the reporting from a spreadsheet. This would give a “snapshot” report, but of course would not be built into Collectorz.
(2) I also looked at “Transfer Field Data” in the Windows version of the program. As it stands this doesn’t work, since, apart from in the Notes field, you cannot concatenate data, and in the Notes field, when appending data, the data is placed on separate lines, with the field labels added.
However, if you are planning new development work, it should be possible to modify the Transfer Field Data (if this is to be added to Connect), to concatenate data from several fields into a User Defined Text Field.
The ideal solution would be nested box sets. In the attached image, you’ll see parent profiles for the box sets and child profiles nested underneath with the individual titles in the set. Right now, our choices are either/or, either the parent profile (counting as 1) or the individual items. Since you’ve made it clear this is not something you would consider, your solution of adding the box set title automatically in front of the title with a button is one option, I suppose. To avoid the “A” situation you mentioned, just have it use the Title Sort field instead of the Title field. That field will already have been altered for sorting. Another solution would to be to give the user the ability to have an entry count for more than 1. I would be perfectly happy with having just the box set title listed if I could set that entry to the number of items inside. Might that be an easier solution that the concatenation of title fields? I’m not sure.
Regardless, currently, the only option is to manually set the Title Sort field of each box set item with the box set title first.
I always liked that the nesting allowed me to “Default” to only the actual things I bought (either box sets or totally solo individual movies).
I’d tag the box sets as box set so that I could filter them out and get “flat”/“unnested” sorting by individual movie title if I wanted to just look at the “movies” I own vs. the “objects” I own.
(I’m speaking in the past tense as if I don’t still maintain that databaze alongside CLZ…but I actually do. And would like to stop, but a few features aren’t shared, alas)
