On Sat, 23 Jun 2007 07:53:00 -0700, Robert J. Richter
wrote:

I have copied my music files from my old Xp system, but when I look at them
in explorer I can not find any of the file info (Artists, Album, Genre) that
has been downloaded, I discovered this when I could not get this info in
Media Player. I have done a find album info in media player, but when I go to
"now playing, no info shows up other than title and length, and no other
columns are available to add.
thanks for your help in advance.

Do the various columns like artist, genre show up in Windows Explorer?
If not, here's how to make them show.

1. Go to Windows Explorer. Set Detail View.

2. Right click on some white space at far right within the right
window pane, then select sort by.

3. Now be sure to pick MORE. You now should see the full list of
categories that are available, but remember not all will be filled
in for every file since there may not be any included meta data in
every file.

4. Check the ones you want to track. IMPORTANT... don't forget to
use the "move up" button which will bubble up your sort choices to
the top of the sort list. If you don't do this, then you choices
may not show. Don't worry about order they are in yet.

Assuming you picked five categories to track these columns should now
show if you followed the above steps. Click on any column heading and
while holding down your left mouse drag them left or right to get them
in the order you desire as far as which columns appear left to right.
You can also hover over the vertical dividing line between categories
in the column headings and once you see the cursor change while
holding down your left mouse drag left or right to resize the width of
the column.

You can "sort" by column just by clicking on the column heading. So if
you wanted to sort your folder by genre and you added that column,
just hover over the column heading until it changes color then click
and the files will get sorted by genre. Click on another column
heading to sort by that one.

Now to ADD more data or change it, right click on a file, properties,
then the Details tab. You now can edit many but not all fields by
clicking anywhere in the blank space if nothing is already there or
clicking on the data already there then entering something new.

Now that you've set up more sort columns this should get carried over
to also show in other Explorer Views. For example now switch to Large
Icons. You probably will see some album covers. Click on one and if
you enable the Detail Pane it will reflect the details of the file.

To enable the Detail Pane... from Windows Explorer click on Organize,
then pick Layout to get to the point you can enable the Detail Pane.
This shows by default at the bottom of the windows with a pale blue
background.

For example to give an idea how this works I have a pretty extensive
music collection I converted to Mp3 format. I just clicked on a old
Elvis album. I see a thumbnail of Elvis playing bass, in the Detail
Pane it shows the file name, (what I gave it) format: (Mp3) Artist:
Elvis, Album: Memories: The 1968 Comeback collection Gen Rock, plus
I also added columns to show the playing length, rating (number of
stars I gave it), year: 1968, file size of song, bitrate encoded at
and last modified date.