iTunes Autofilter

[Russ]

Does anyone know if either iTunes has an MS Excel-like autofilter, or if there is an add-on program for such a thing?

 

[Christopher]

Hi Russ,

 

This link describes some of your view options in iTunes...

http://www.macworld.com/article/146649/2010/02/itunes_views.html

 

Will List View with additional columns work for you?

 

Cheers,

Chris

 

 

[krass]

it's not auto filter (which in excel will on the fly pick up new entries within it's drop down list), but if you only have a limited number of preselected "options" that you want to choose from then you could set up separate smart folders for each ?

 

 

 

[Russ]

Although it's not exactly what I'm looking for, this will help. I'll live with the column browser set to "top" for a while and see how it goes.

 

Thanks,

Russ...

 

[Russ]

But there is still too much info. I'll work with column browser set to "top" as this appears to be the best available solution.

 

Thanks,

Russ...

 

[Paul R]

Not sure exactly what you are trying to do - perhaps there is another way to accomplish the same end... ?

 

[Russ]

Paul, like so many people these days, I work with spreadsheets all day long. I make extensive use of autofilters, including custom filters. It would be nice to only look at the info that I want to see.

 

The column browser is helping with this, but it is limited in the options available, and it takes up screen space. What if I only want to look at music that was recorded in a sampling rate above 44.1 KHz that I haven't listened to yet? How about all songs with "New York" in the title without also having to look at albums that also contain that?

 

Thanks,

Russ...

 

[Paul R]

Ah- now I see. Well, Smart play lists can take care of all that you mentioned there.

 

In your example above, the settings are all available from drop downs though. Easy peasy, and about 30 seconds each.

 

Here's some pics, though the screen capture caught the dialog boxes unselected for some reason.

 

Unplayed music with sample rates greater than 44100:

 

 

 

Songs (not albums) with "New York" in their name:

 

 

 

 

-Paul

 

P.S. You can also hand edit in some settings, but I only need to do that occasionally, like when I am looking for specific type of music files, such as protected AAC files.

 

 

[Russ]

I'll play with that over the weekend.

 

Russ...

 

[krass]

although smart playlists and auto filter are functionally the same, the real benefit of the excel style filter is that you don't have to preconfigure it to use it; simply tapping on the column header filter presents all available options for that column, then tapping on another column filter would present only the available options for that column that still remain, etc

 

problem with smart playlists is that every time you want to use it, you have to spend time creating the playlist criteria before applying it. you also cannot see in realtime if your concatenated filters are still valid.... = no results ! and the 30secs to create each time soon becomes a pain

 

excel auto filters do everything realtime on the fly; it's the realtime live filtering that's so useful, and as the OP suggests would indeed be a great functionality but alas I don't think exists even closely.

 

mike

 

[Paul R]

Talk about damning with faint praise.

 

When I set "autofilter" on a column header in Excel, I get exactly five options - Sort Descending, Sort Ascending, (all) (Top Ten) and (custom).

 

It's probably that I am just not an Excel kind of guy. I avoid it professionally because so many people do an "analysis" with Excel and come up with the wrong answers. They don't understand the data they are using and of course, there are an infinite number of ways to get wrong answers that way.

 

-Paul

 

 

[krass]

Paul, try selecting the entire top row first and then apply autofilter; if your columns have data in them you should then see the available valid values for each column underneath the 5 options you mention.......

 

oops, off topic, slap wrist.

 

apologies again if I caused offense, just trying to make clear the essential difference in these 2 options, best regards, mike

 

[Bob Stern]

It performs a logical AND of each word or word prefix that you type. (Click and hold the magnifying lens icon, then select All from the popup to apply your search criteria to all fields.)

 

For example, if I'm searching for Beethoven sonata op. 109 performed by Barenboim, I can simply type the following (the order of the words is irrelevant):

beet 109 baren

 

[drewant]

I think smart playlists should be able to provide what the OP wants. However, my complaint with playlists, smart or otherwise, is that it doesn’t allow me to browse the playlist the same way as my library as a whole (I’m using the Apple ipad remote app). It just gives me a laundry list of the song titles, but I want to still be able to view by genre, artist, album etc. Anyone know if there’s a way to do this? Hopefully I’m missing something obvious.

 

[Paul R]

No offense taken. I just meant I am probably exactly the wrong guy to evaluate how Excel performs.

 

-Paul

 

 

[Paul R]

I am pretty sure that the playlists display on your iPhone/iPad in the same order you left them on the computer. Not really dynamic, but I leave some playlists in a particular order just to facilitate browsing.

 

-Paul