New contact: Categories not alpha ordered and no keyboard mapping

1

When creating a new contact the categories in the dropdown listbox is not alpha sorted.
Moreover a quick search is not working when trying to select one category pressing a keyboard key.

This definetely is a needed functionality…
I mean, if alphabetic order is not possible, could it be possible to type “F” to quickly get to “Family” for example?
It is very common to have lots of categories and the little dropdown window with no alphabetic order is something awkward. You have to jump here and there before finding the right category, and it seems that they are ordered with no understandable criteria.

Thanks a lot!

2

Categories are not alphabetically sorted as the sort order can be setup manually, you can chose which categories will be listed on the top by using the category settings in Tools > Categories.

Regards,
Paul

3

Thanks for the hint! Is there any method to work on this list ? I would like to put the categories inside Excel for example, order the list and the reimport… Maybe categories are inside a file or something I could find?
It would take me days to do it manually… what do you think about a Alpha order button in that tools>categories window? :wink:

Many thanks, as usual!

4

ps. I was talking about a way to quickly open/edit/save category_index.dat , with em client not running of course :wink:

5

I managed to open the SQL db and manipulate data. I tried to change the order and save the db… it works! Now I reverted to the original file because I found that I have ordered names from the “Categories” table, which also changed the IDs (this is wrong) and then the contacts changed their original categories (not what we want). But the list in the dropdown menu, at last, was alpha ordered, so something is going right.
I have 463 categories… manual order is impossible, so it is if you have 100 categories imho.

Now that I know how to export/order/reimport data from the category_index.dat sql db I just have to find the right method to leave contacts untouched and only change the order in the dropdown listbox.

For this purpose, the fields to be considered are “id” and “name” inside the table “Categories” , and “id”, “parentId” and “categoryId” from the table “CategoryRelations”

Any suggestion on how to proceed?

6

Hi again Pasquale, editing the SQL database files manually is not supported, this could result in database corruption leaving you unable to access your data. As I previously suggested the order of the categories can be set in the category window in Tools > Categories by drag and dropping the categories to a selected position or by using the move up/move down buttons.

Regards,
Paul