How to access a custom template in the metadata window?

So, I’ve created a custom template for my project but the template doesn’t appear in the drop-down menu in the Metadata windows for my image files. In other words, it’s a drop-down menu option in the place where I created it (Tropy Preferences>Templates) but not in the place where I would select it for actual use.

Am I missing a step? I looked at the documentation and the forums but didn’t see this. Thanks.

When you created the template, did you make it an Item Template? (It’s possible to create Photo Templates in the Template editor, but Tropy currently does not allow you to change the photo templates).

That was the problem. Now that I’ve created a new Item Template, it’s showing up in the Metadata drop-down as expected. Thanks!

Meanwhile, one thing that is curious now that I can see the custom template I’ve created: it’s insisting on adding a field at the end of my list called Type (italics original) and default-filling with “Correspondence.” Any way to get rid of this field? If not, is there any way to fill with a different default term?

This is probably the last field defined by your template (maybe added by accident?).

If in doubt, you can also export your template and upload it here then we can take a look at it (you can export the template, by selecting in the template editor and then clicking on the export action; a template is saved using a .ttp extension by default, but it is simply a JSON-LD file).

I think I might have selected the Type field before I realized there was a Medium field, which is much more suited to my project. I did pop in a few fields quickly right after I saw your first reply, just to test that the Item Template was going to be visible in the Metadata window.

Anyway, I’d like to remove or at least modify this field. It’s no longer in the window where I am customizing the template (i.e. under Preferences) but I can still see it in the Metadata window. Thoughts?

Did you close the Preferences window? The project window will only reload the ontology database (which contains the templates) once the preferences window has been closed.

Yes. Actually, I also closed Tropy completely and then opened it again. Still there.

I’m sorry, I actually missed the obvious yesterday: you mentioned the dc:type field was added at the end of your metadata? I’m assuming the label ‘type’ is spelled in italics as well? This is actually a hint that this is a so called ‘extra’ field; they are probably not documented well, because we have not conclusively decided how prominent they should be, but basically, an item can have additional properties, which are not defined by the template. Right now you can’t add extra fields directly, but it’s something we’ve been considering to allow (i.e., if you just want to add an extra field to a handful of items, but don’t want to create a new template for them); there is only an indirect way: if you have an item with a value (e.g. type = ‘correspondence’) and you switch the item’s template to a template which does not have the corresponding field, it will stay on as an extra field. This is mainly to make sure you never lose data by changing templates. In your case, the value was probably created as a default value by the ‘Correspondence’ template. At this point, it’s important to understand that template default values turn into actual metadata values when you apply the template to an item, because otherwise such values would never turn up in searches and similar situations. In any case, it should be easy to get rid of extra fields: just clear the field and it will disappear the next time you open Tropy. (Use bulk editing if you want to clear the field for all/many items at the same time)

That did it! Thank you! Custom template looks great now.