Organizing a large collection

A collection does not become large overnight. One day you scroll to find an item you know by heart, you hesitate before adding a new one for fear of a duplicate, and your filters no longer show what you care about. That is the moment to ask whether it should stay that way.

MyCataLog has no tags, sub-collections or folders: the collection is the only level of grouping. Splitting is therefore how you tidy up, and three criteria help you decide.

Category first. A collection has a single category, and that is what decides the fields offered for each item. Records and books in the same collection always means fields missing for one or the other.

Visibility next. It is set per collection, and a collection can only go public if each of its items has a photo. Separating what you want to show from what you keep to yourself stops a single item without a photo from blocking everything else.

Use, finally. A series you are actively completing, a part you plan to sell, inherited items you catalogue for the record: these are different ways of looking, and each is better with its own view.

The free account allows 2 collections, the Plus subscription 8, and Premium has no limit. Splitting uses up collections: think about it before cutting a series into ten.

To split without setting everything up again, use "New collection based on this one" in the original collection's menu. The new one takes over the description, category, sorts and filters, and its name is prefilled with "(copy)". It is created empty and private. Then move the items one by one with "Move to…" , from each item's menu. There is no bulk move, which is one more reason to split early rather than at 1000 items.

A moved item keeps its number if it is free in the destination collection, and gets a new one otherwise. You can move it to a collection of another category: MyCataLog warns you, and the fields that do not exist in the new category are hidden, not deleted. They come back if the item returns. Finally, an item without a photo cannot join a public or friends-only collection.

The search bar is the fastest way to find an item you know something about. It looks for the text you type, ignoring capitals, in the name, number, description, price and above all in every field specific to the category: the artist and label of a record, the author and publisher of a book, the character of a figure.

It has two limits. It does not read the labels of condition or rarity: for those fields, use the filters. And it is not saved: when you come back to the collection, the bar is empty.

Filters, on the other hand, are saved with the collection. Seven fields can be filtered: ownership, condition, rarity, rating, purchase price, origin date and acquisition date. Several filters add up, and an item must meet all of them to stay displayed: filtering rarity on Rare and condition on New only shows items that are both rare and new. However, a field only takes one value at a time: you cannot display Rare and Super rare items together.

The rating filter also offers "Unrated", handy for finding the items you have not rated yet. Dates are filtered to the exact day. The purchase price is filtered by the text it contains.

Fields specific to the category cannot be filtered. To keep only the records of one label on screen, use the search and type the label's name.

Search and filters add up. As soon as either is active, the counter at the top of the collection shows the number of displayed items out of the total, so you know at a glance what you are looking at. If nothing matches any more, a "Reset filters" button brings the whole collection back on screen.

A good habit on a large collection: save on each collection the filters of the view you check most often, and keep the search for one-off questions. The saved view is what will greet you on every visit.

A sort is not just for tidying up: well chosen, it answers a question without reading each entry. Sorts apply to the serial number, name, ownership, condition, purchase price, rarity, rating and both dates. They stack with "Add sort", and their order matters: the second one only breaks ties on the first. Each level reverses with one click, and each field can only be used once.

Without a sort, items appear from newest to oldest. Your sorts, like your filters, are saved with the collection.

A few behaviours to know so the result holds no surprises. An item with no value for the sorted field goes to the end of the list, in either direction: a sort by price does not mix items without a price in with the others. Rating is the exception: an unrated item counts as the lowest rating, so it comes first in an ascending sort. Numbers sort as numbers, 2 before 10, not as text. Names are sorted ignoring capitals and accents.

The ownership sort is designed for gaps: in ascending order, "Not owned" items come first, then those you are waiting for, then those you have. In descending order, the items you own come first.

Three recipes that work on a large collection. For a readable inventory, sort by descending ownership, then by name. To see what you still have to find, filter ownership on "Not owned", then sort by descending rarity : the hardest pieces to find come to the top. To spot entries to complete, sort by ascending rating: unrated items come first.

Fields specific to the category, such as artist or author, cannot be sorted. If you want to rank by artist, the answer is to carry the information over into a sortable field, or to make one collection per artist.

On a large collection, your method changes along the way. You decide to rate your items after entering 300 of them, you switch currency, you want to mark a whole series as restored. Opening every entry is not an option: that is what bulk editing is for.

It opens from an item's menu, with a right click, a long press or, on a Mac, the "Item actions" button that appears when you hover over the card, and applies to all displayed items. There are no checkboxes: search and filters define the target. To edit a series, first display exactly that series, check the counter, then open bulk edit. You need at least 2 items on screen.

This menu gathers every action on an item: edit it, start a bulk edit, duplicate it, move it to another collection or delete it.

Several fields can be edited at once, including the category's own fields, each on its own line. A "Clear" button empties a field on every targeted item, except the name and currency, which cannot be left empty. The confirmation window reminds you of the fields concerned and the exact number of items, then applies.

Bulk editing cannot be undone. Unlike a deletion, it does not go through the trash: the old values are kept nowhere. Before a major edit, a copy of the collection leaves you a record. From the Plus subscription, the Excel export produces one in seconds, and the guide Export your collection to Excel explains how to choose a full copy rather than an extract.

Items locked because they exceed your plan's limit are never edited, even if your filters target them. The final message tells you how many items were actually edited.

Collections can be edited in bulk too, from your collections list and through the same menu: name, description and category. Visibility, on the other hand, is set collection by collection, since it depends on each one's photos. Changing the category of several collections deletes no field from their items: those of the old category are simply hidden.

It is better to know your plan's limits before you reach them, especially on a collection that grows fast through imports.

The item limit applies to the whole account, not to each collection: 200 items with the free account, 2000 items with the Plus subscription, no limit with Premium. Once it is reached, you can no longer create or duplicate an item. Importing, however, is not blocked: the extra items are imported, but locked.

A locked item stays visible, but blurred, and no longer opens. It is excluded from bulk editing and from the export. The most recent items are always the ones locked: if your plan goes down, your first items stay accessible and the last ones added go over the limit. Deleting items or changing plan frees them, with nothing lost.

Photo storage has its own limit. If it is exceeded, nothing is deleted: the most recent photos beyond the limit are replaced on screen by a padlock , until you free up space or add storage.

A deleted item goes to your account's trash, with a button to undo right after the deletion. Deleting a collection sends all its items there too. A restore puts the item back in its place, but it first checks that your plan still has room for it.

One last point, more practical than contractual: a collection opens by loading all its items, then displays them as you scroll. The more items it holds, the slower it opens. That is one more reason, alongside those in the first section, to split a collection when it becomes a catch-all rather than waiting for it to become slow.