Hi BMF,

there are a couple of facilities within MM5 search that come frustratingly close to what you are wanting ... maybe they could be tweaked to assist you better?

In Advanced Search you can create a search line for each of your common search tags, and then deselect the ones that you don't need at the moment ... ie. in [url=https://www.dropbox.com/s/0xbdu6h8jggoq47/advanced%20search%20criteria%20templates%20lines.png?dl=0]this diagram[/url] I have created a line for each of the following: Genre, Composer, and track length ... and then I selected just the Genre line, making the current search be Genre only.

That illustration shows when I came back later, and I am going to select a Composer, and deselect the Genre checkbox, making this a Composer query.

MM5 does persist these criteria lines, but not very well. ... ie. it keeps them if you close/open MM5, but it is easy to clear them, and you can't save|reopen your custom set of criteria lines. ... Maybe they could improve that?

Advanced Search also has a [url=https://www.dropbox.com/s/90ql4s4uslxedbl/Advanced%20Search%20recently%20used.png?dl=0]Recently Used facility[/url] which might help you a little bit.

The Contextual Search also has a Recently Used memory, but it is frustrating to use if you want to see [url=https://www.dropbox.com/s/lvuu7ykcpqxluiz/contextual%20search%20full%20list%20of%20recently%20used%20criteria.png?dl=0]your full list[/url] of recent seraches. ... To do you have to:
[list]make a search[/list]
[list]press Enter key[/list]
[list]click on the Search control again[/list]
[list]and then press the down arrow[/list]

Otherwise you only see a list filtered by the 1st characters that you typed, and if you backspace to try another character the search control closes :(

Dear stuff,

in MM4 there was a (fixed) search mask with the most common tags. "Any text field, Title, Interpret, composer ...This way it was possible to do a very quick search. Then there was the possibility to put own tags together to do a more personal search with maybe not so common tags. A click desaster for me.

Now in MM5 there is the so called contextual search and the mm5 equivalent to the advanced search with the personal combination of tags (the click desaster in a modernized finish). In my opinion and how i use the Mediamonkey the contextual search does not fit very much for me. Otherwise In my MM4 times i always hated to do an own combination of tags. It simply took too much time. But i was grateful for the fixed mask. Even when i wished several times to have other tags there. For example i seldom use genre but very often the grouping field with classical music.

So now to my suggestion. Can i get the best of both of the old and the new worlds? Since months i don't use MM4 any longer, but I would like to see a customizable (saveble) mask for an advanced search. It would avoid a lot of clicking and typing. It must not be the standard search, but users with big collections would be able to do specialized searches through all their data in short time.

Greetings

bmf