Using WinCatalog you can assign any number of text fields to any entry, this functionality is called User Defined Fields.
The functionality of the User-Defined Fields extends WinCatalog and allows adding any number of text columns to any entry (and even show these columns in the grid view).
Disclaimer: The functionality of User Defined-Fields is far from been perfect in the current version and will be reconsidered in the upcoming major update. The main conception remains the same, but it will be much easier to add, remove, and modify the fields.
Explanation of User-Defined Fields
Each field may contain any text data (it can't add lists, checkboxes, images, or other types of data, this functionality is planned for future updates).
Only one set of fields is available on the catalog level. Each entry in the catalog has the same set of User-Defined Fields, but if you didn't explicitly assign any value to the particular entry, the value of the field for this entry is empty and the field doesn't show up in the list of fields for this particular entry.
After adding a new entry to your catalog, please make a right mouse click on the entry, and click Properties. Follow to the User-Defined Fields tab. If you didn't assign any field to this entry before, the list of fields will be empty. Later, all fields having values for this entry will appear there.
Click the Add button to assign a field to the selected entry. You will see the "Add new field" window. Type a field name, or select it from the dropdown list (if you already have user-defined fields in your catalog, all fields will be available there), and then type or paste a text value into the Value field. Click OK. Do the same for other fields, and then click OK in the Properties window to save changes. Move to another entry and repeat these steps.
There are 5 user defined fields on the screenshot below assigned to a software product folder: Date Purchased, Price Paid, License Expire Date, License Key, and Rating):
To get the full list of all fields for the catalog file, please click the Manage User Defined-Fields button on the Managing tab of the Ribbon toolbar. The Header field is what you see on the User-Defined Fields in the Properties dialog (you can use any caption you wish, for example, "Details").
After adding one or more custom fields, you can add columns to the Grid View that will display values stored in these fields. Click the Gear button in the header area of the Name column, you will see the full list of all available columns. Scroll down (all columns for user-defined fields are located at the end of the list), and mark the newly created column.
Click OK and the column will appear in the rightmost position. You can drag it to any position you want, change the width of the column. If you click on the column header, entries will be sorted by the values of this column.
If you want to use values stored in User-Defined Fields when searching, you should mark the penultimate row of the additional search options named after the Header value of your fields ("User Defined Fields", by default, or "Details" in the example above). Then type a part of the string to search, and click Search. The additional search options work as filters. First, WinCatalog finds all entries matching the search query entered into the Search field (on top), and then it filters results according to these additional search options.
User-Defined fields may be extremely helpful when you catalog non-file items. Imagine, you have a collection of coins, pins, postge stamps, Lego sets, or anything else. Use custom items (purple pyramid icon) to represent each item of your collection, create coin-specific columns and fill them in. Consider user-defined fields as a spreadsheet, but more powerful.
