Inventory management tips

This is a guide to managing your inventory in Second Life. Searching for an item in your inventory can be a frustrating affair; some Residents have over 15,000 inventory items to sort through! Luckily, you have many features at your disposal; combined with good organization, you should be able to keep track of all your worldly possessions.

Get organized

The first step toward keeping track of your items is keeping them organized. By creating a system of folders in your inventory, you can easily categorize objects you've acquired:

1. You can make as many folders in your inventory as you want, at the top level or inside other folders:
   • Right-click an existing folder in your Inventory window and choose New Folder.
   • Folders with unique icons (such as Library or Clothing) cannot be deleted, moved, or renamed.
2. Give your folders names that really help you remember what you put in them:
   • For example: "My Cars", "Board Game Pieces", and "Parts For My Hippo Costume" are good examples, but a more detailed naming system may be needed if you want to get serious.
3. You may want to play with the settings in the Sort menu, organizing your system folders to the top of your inventory's list, or always sorting folders by name, while still sorting inventory items within the folders by date.

Be specific

How can you best organize your objects such that you can easily find them later? You may find that sorting items into categories can help narrow your search considerably.

For example: Having distinct categories for textures can make it easier to find similar content:

• Textures:
  • Fabric
  • Glass
  • Liquid
  • Metal
  • Stone
  • Wood

Once you're comfortable with your folder structure, move your things around into the new folders (just drag-and-drop) so you can find them easily. You may even select and move multiple items at the same time by holding down the Shift key!

Organization tips

• You can create multiple copies of objects in your inventory. For instance, you may want to wear the same shirt as part of two different outfits: To make a second copy of the shirt, right-click it, select Copy, select the folder for your second outfit, right-click it, and select Paste!
• You can open a second inventory window for easy organizing (drag items from one window to a folder in the other window) and easy passing of objects (drag things from one window to a calling card in the other). To open a second window, select New Window from your Inventory window's File menu.
• You should empty your trash often; by reducing the total number of items in your inventory, you can help your inventory load faster.

All Items vs. Recent Items

As soon as you open your inventory (push the Inventory button at the bottom right of your screen or go to View > Inventory), you'll see there are two tabs titled All Items and Recent Items, similar to the tabs in the Instant Message window.

Click on Recent Items to see what you've received since the last time you logged out of Second Life. If there's nothing in there, don't worry, just ask a friend to send you an object, or buy something from a store, and you'll see it appear. It can get pretty addictive to watch the list grow, much like checking your inbox in an email program.

Note that you only have one actual inventory, which you can view on the All Items tab; the Recent Items tab represents a subset of your total inventory, so you'll be able to find the same item on both tabs.

Tip: Tip: You may consider spending a few minutes each day sorting your inventory. It adds up quite quickly! You can use the Recent Items tab as an inbox to track newly acquired items, so you don't need to wait for things to pile up before you start organizing.

Little Features Make a Big Difference

There are several subtle-but-welcome features on the Inventory window, including:

X Marks the Spot: An X, which clears the current query when pressed, appears at the very right of the search bar when you've entered text.

Sort Folders Always by Name: When you've checked this and you also set Sort > By Date, this forces your folders to display alphabetically. For example, "Animations" will appear ahead of "Clothing". If unchecked, then folders with the newest received items will be sorted by date too, meaning if you just got a shirt in "Clothing", it'll appear at the top of the list. Try sorting folders alphabetically and by date and see which method you like best!

Filter options in the File menu: Let you modify and reset the current filters. Filters let you show and hide categories of inventory items to declutter your view, and you can set a duration for which recently-received items are displayed.

Tip: Tip: The All Items and Recent Items tabs each have their own unique filter settings. What you filter in one tab does not affect the other. While this may initially be confusing, you can use this feature to your advantage by sorting your inventory into two different views at the same time.

Further Filtering

If you've never used filters before, try this to get a hands-on feel:

1. In the Inventory window, click the All Items tab and open a lot of folders by clicking on the white triangles. They'll "expand" and the arrows will rotate to point downwards, indicating they're open.
2. Select File > Show Filters.
3. In the Filters window, uncheck all the inventory item type checkboxes and watch things "disappear". Don't worry, you haven't lost anything! It's still all there, it's just hidden. Check the boxes and look as they're shown again. It's easy to recognize each type of item by its icon (the little picture to the left of its name).

Also, you can toggle all item types with a single click by using the All and None buttons. Below these is Always show folders, which displays all folders when doing a search. Unchecking it will only display folders containing matches. Keep on going and you'll see Since Logoff, which is enabled by default on the Recent Items tab. It's short for "Show me the items I've received since the last time I logged out of Second Life". If that's not good enough for you, you may choose to specify a time range. For example, entering 7 days and 14 hours means, "Show me the items I've received in the last 7 days and 14 hours".

Tip: Tip: If you ever think you've lost inventory, be sure to check that your filters are showing everything! To do this, try selecting File > Reset Filters from your Inventory window.

Advanced Inventory Management

There are a number of tricks which aren't immediately obvious but are extremely useful for highly-efficient organization of your inventory:Multi-View: An old classic! Try using File menu > New Window so you have two Inventory windows open at once. Then, you can move stuff back and forth between two folders, and you can have a different view in each one. What's more, each Inventory window has its own set of filters; however, this technique can be inconvenient because of the amount of screen space it uses.

Drag and Drop: Try dragging items from one tab to the other; this is very useful if you want to sort your Recent Items. Just click-and-drag any folder or item (Ctrl+Left-click to select multiples) from within one tab to the other tab's title: you'll notice the view switches immediately. Move the cursor over the folder you're looking for, and release the mouse button. You'll see the folders spring back quickly, and your items have been moved!

Filter Master: By altering filter settings, you can actually turn All Items into another Recent Items tab. Check Since Logoff or enter a time for both tabs, and then you'll have what amounts to two Recent Items tabs. If you're ever unsure of your changes, just reset them from the Filters menu.

Note: Note: Main system folders, meaning the ones with special icons like Body Parts and Objects, can't be moved. Neither can the Library's contents, or the Trash.

Want more?

Check out this great video tutorial: Inventory management tips and more - Video Tutorial