How To Use Obsidian: Properties, DataView, & ONE HUGE PROBLEM TO AVOID

[@plus1creator]

Come join my creator community: www.plus1creator.com

[@PapoochCZ]

You can just wrap "Release Date" in quotes in the dataview

[@plus1creator]

LOL is it really that simple

[@HiltonT69]

It sure is. :)

[@plus1creator]

@@HiltonT69 I'm such an idiot; hopefully it helps other folks realize even an idiot can stumble through this stuff.

[@onzamono]

Yeah, if you never used some basic code or programming languages, these simple things are not so easy and clear. But I think always is a good idea to keep property names in one word, and tags, of course. And file names.

[@plus1creator]

​@@onzamono my filenames are all over the place. Never one word. 😂

[@ollielon5926]

For someone who admits to not understanding programming and how it can present a problem at times, you actually gave a much clearer explanation on how to use DataView than most other KZbinrs I've seen.

[@plus1creator]

That makes me so happy to hear; I appreciate you telling me that. (And don't tell anyone that I'm good at explaining coding. It'll ruin my street cred as the non-coding guy! X^D )

[@mitaahara1684]

Exactly. Finally I understand. What a great video. Thank you.

[@plus1creator]

@@mitaahara1684 glad to hear that!

[@orientavy]

so true

[@BuddhaNatureOfTheGrind]

I'm unsure if these comments covered this, but "Release Date" can be a valid property name. If you want to use that property in Dataview, you can use "lower kebab case" in your query. In this case, you would use "release-date." All lowercase with spaces replaced with a dash.

[@plus1creator]

Correct. There are workarounds but that still doesn't change the fact that it doesn't work like I'd expect it to! 😂

[@FaiziCrofts]

Hey wouldn't "release_date" find "release date"? I'm pretty sure it will though I haven't tested this.

[@plus1creator]

Give it a go and report back!

[@JasonGillmanJr]

Thanks for pointing out this plugin. I've been dabbling with Obsidian, and I'm also a data engineer. This is checking all kinds of nerd boxes!

[@plus1creator]

Welcome fellow nerd!

[@Music-ct4cj]

It's been a long time, but if you haven't figured it out yet, you don't need to edit note by note. You can use the properties pannel and when you edit that property all notes will be updated (like, when taking the spaces out). Also, better than the words together might be to use underscore in place of the spaces so it stays more organized

[@plus1creator]

You're right; it's a great update. At the time of recording, however, that was not possible. Maybe I should make a "Hey! It's better!" update video. Thanks for the comment!

[@Music-ct4cj]

@@plus1creator ah, ok. I’m a new(ish) user so I didn’t know it wasn’t like that before. Do the video :D I’m curious to know what else you found so far. Because I rarely use properties but I feel like if you get the habit it will improve your flow a lot (hey FOMO 🫣)

[@bobanderson1727]

I didn't know Obsidian was this capable. I was thinking it was just a way of automagically linking notes together. I think you've struck gold! Now I'm going to have to take a much deeper look at using Obsidian. I had almost "written it off" as just another notes keeping program with hyperlinks. Now I'm beginning to understand that Obsidian may be something really special. Thanks for making this video, and please don't call yourself an "Idiot". You just hadn't learned all the details of creating a query. Now we've *both* learned something new. Probably more folks, too....

[@plus1creator]

Hi Bob, I really appreciate you saying that. Glad it helped you recognize the extra functionality that's hiding under the hood. It really is incredible what people have figured out what to build with it.

[@guesswhomofo]

he’s right, you approached the issues with code exactly like a developer, you’re inexperienced but certainly have the mind for it

[@plus1creator]

Thank you!

[@SteveJohnSteele]

I've watched a lot of videos on DataView and this is the first one I actually understand. Thank you.

[@plus1creator]

Mission accomplished!

[@miguelthedrawtist]

Same here. Not gonna lie

[@ISMAILABUKAR-h8q]

Thanks, A new subscriber now🎉🎉🎉

[@plus1creator]

Glad you're finding my videos worth subscribing to. Happy to have you.

[@PaulDickson7]

I have been using Obsidian for about a year and a half and have also ignored YAML due to formating and not liking it sitting at the top of my notes. Ended up laying out properties the same way as you did. Now Obisidian have improved how properties are displayed I may start changing how I enter meta data moving forward.

[@plus1creator]

right on!

[@DanteMishima]

Technically, all that was done is make frontmatter look "nicer" The issue you had with the tag being split is one of the reasons I won't switch to properties. I have a better handle of what's going on if I can see what the actual values are (not something I've clicked)

[@plus1creator]

Looking nicer is a big selling point with me.

[@lilyofthe4lley]

@@plus1creatorhorrible selling point with me... now frontmatter is automatically reformatted to work with properties view and to have a unified way so plugins can interact with it. But that comes with a cost to customization and handling things the way I want to. The selling point for me was its felxibility and now it less flexible. Advice to avoid the kind of problems in the video, use only lowercase name for properties' keys, if a key has more than one word separate it with dash (-) or underscore(_). Example: release_date. I prefer the dash aestetically but with some plugin is giving me problems because it is considered a separator so I'm forced to use the underscore. Another advice, when you have values with more than one word such as the title (The Matrix) encapsulate it in double quotes ("). I would also learn YAML since it is very very easy, probably easier than markdown. It was born as a markup language, it's not programming. YAML can be confusing when you start to work with objects but they are not even supported in obsidian. The rest is really basic and will help you work with the properties and dataview and other plugins. It will go a long way

[@waynesmith7410]

"Singing in the rain" is not Black and white and never was

[@plus1creator]

How dare you challenge my faulty memory with facts?! X^D

[@xtrailz]

black-and-white should be a toggle like Yes/No rather than a tag. It only has two states.

[@plus1creator]

thank you

[@amanda-hibiscus]

Jonathan, thank you for this very approachable video for the curious but average person! Very helpful!

[@plus1creator]

So happy to hear you say that. That's exactly the approach I'm going for. 🙏

[@jcbrown00]

Thanks for exposing your mistakes! Helpful to see vulnerabilities and how you worked around them. I wonder if the HTML trick for "spaces" might also work? Because that markup language doesn't parse spaces correctly either, you can use "&nbsp" (the crazy letter codes between the quotes) to tell the language that you need a space. So *maybe* you can keep your "Release Date" property with the space (no quotes), but in the dataview, *maybe* you can try "&nbsp" (again, no quotes) to call an item with a space. Dunno...worth a try. And since I'm super novice and only setting up my first vault, I'll have to try this when I get around to dataview later!

[@plus1creator]

Let me know how it goes; that's a cool idea.

[@commonchild3054]

my man, this is an awesome explanation of properties and how to use them. I know Obsidian pretty well, but overthink it so much. Your videos are refreshing and inspiring. Your pacing is great, and your tone is super friendly. Looking forward to watching more!

[@plus1creator]

That means the world to me; I appreciate you saying that. If you have other topics or subjects around Obsidian that you'd like me to take a look at, I'm all ears. 🙏

[@williambell4591]

As someone who is just starting to use Obsidian, this video is PRICELESS! I have a HUGE (with a 'B') movie and photo collection and I'm attempting to use Obsidian (especially being able to link to files on my computer!), as a means to catalog my zillions (again w\a 'B') of files. I'm also using the Media Extended Community plugin which allows me to create time-stamped notes and take screenshots from the media player while playing through the videos- NICE! 👍 THANKS so much for teaching the use of Properties and the Dataview - PROPS! Edit - AND you saved me from having to remove zillions of spaces from within my property names once I start using the Dataview! 👍💯

[@plus1creator]

This makes my whole day! This week I made a video about search; but I almost did one on how I use Obsidian to keep track of files. I don't see a lot of people talking about it, but it sounds like it's how you're using it too. Maybe I'll make that one next and we can compare notes. ::high five::

[@williambell4591]

Back around Nov. 2022, I discovered Notion here on YT and was shocked - then I saw a video "Notion vs Coda" where Coda was hella winning in the feature comparisons, so I subscribed to Coda, and eventually created a nice set of database tables and have been using that, BUT in addition to just "Ingesting" new files, I also need a way to track _filename changes_ to my files as I review, edit, and reuse them in other content. Being web based, Coda can't help me with actually linking to files on my computer(s), and keeping track as the files "evolve" over time, so I never got past the ingest part using Coda (~2800 records so far). Working w/the Media Extended plugin has given me hope as to FINALLY cataloging and rating the CONTENT of my files - I'm at the point now where I'm wondering how to change the "template" of the Media Extended plugin to do similar to what you showed with _Properties_ etc. This morning before seeing your videos, I looking around to see how I could develop my own Obsidian plugins (once I link to, and catalog my ingested files , but then start moving / renaming them etc., that's a good amount of rework fixing the filename links back in Obsidian - doing that in a plugin ("original pathname", "new pathname") etc., would simplify fixing my original ingest note pages... As a software developer (Windows .NET / WPF) for years I've been thinking about writing my own "Media Management" package, but discovering Notion / Coda et al, I've been trying to use these RAD (Rapid Application Development / note taking) tools to see if I could avoid that route. So again, thanks so much for your videos - out of all the "Productivity" authors here on YT, I find your videos are direct / FOCUSED on the important features, and teach people to the point where LIGHT BULBS turn on in their minds - simply PRICELESS IMO! I'm in my office now, looking to implement what I learned and discovered from your videos earlier today!.. 🤩👍 EDIT: - You don't see "many people" talking about working with files because it such a 10-ton weight of work around their necks, they can't lift up their arms and heads to write about it! Out of my zillions of files, I want to be able to search "all videos [outdoors] by a [pool with blue-green water] [mountains in the background] and a [man in RED swim trunks] To be able to do that with all these files I have, will be a great day for me... (Also being able to see timestamps in the search results?? I'll go out and buy myself an ICE CREAM CONE! 🍦)

[@SteveJohnSteele]

21:50 look at how the tags look different in the side panel. "black and white" or "black" "and" "white". I ran into a similar problem. Also same problem with field names "Release Date". I eventually went for single word field names and tags. Or tags like "black_and_white".

[@plus1creator]

Yep. YAML is a universe with no spaces (or at least you might need quotes around the whole phrase for it to work).

[@mikhalpalych]

@@plus1creator doesn't placing phrases with spaces into quotes work?

[@mikhalpalych]

(not trying to be smart or smth, just hanging around and imagining how all these community plugins will fit me)

[@plus1creator]

@@mikhalpalych someone else mentioned that; I don't remember if I ever got that to work. I just made the decision to never use spaces in my fields so I never need to worry about it.

[@JOSHUAPAIK7]

Thank you for your great in depth review for this particular, important subject! Handling database in Obsidian! Thanks a lot!

[@plus1creator]

You are welcome; I appreciate you dropping by to leave a comment. 🙏

[@orientavy]

Thanks man

[@plus1creator]

You're welcome!

[@markcoren2842]

Useful video. I'm new to Obsidian but well versed as a dev. It's been very helpful to get practical insights into how it's used in a real world scenario that's not academically oriented. I'm looking forward to watching more of your videos. Thanks for taking the time to share all of this knowledge!

[@plus1creator]

Thanks Mark, that means the world to me. I appreciate you taking time to let me know it's helping. If you have any questions about obsidian or topics you might like me to cover, feel free to shoot 'em over (and I'll make it if it's in my skillset)!

[@ConradCarriker]

thanks man, you made this easy to understand. I am glad you saved me time on the 'space' problem.

[@plus1creator]

Glad to know it was useful. Fun side note: since I made this video there was an update where you can globally update a property instead of having to go into every single note and change it or figure out how to code some programmatic solution in the terminal outside the Obsidian environment. Still, even with the global update now it's still a real bummer if you screw up your Data view stuff.

[@williambell4591]

@@plus1creator Globally update a Property?? That sounds delicious - must look into that!

[@plus1creator]

@@williambell4591 ⊳ Open the Command Palette ⌘ P ⊳ Search for and select Properties view: Show all properties ⊳ Right-click on the tag and select Rename in the All Properties view

[@williambell4591]

@@plus1creator PROPS, thanks!

[@SteveJohnSteele]

I had a problem with dates. Some of them I knew the whole date, some only the year and month, and some only the year. In the end I opted for "Text" and using the "YYYY-MM-DD" format which worked even when I only had "YYYY". Since 1999 is before 1999-12-01 in alphabetical order!

[@plus1creator]

I went for the year month day approach too.

[@williambell4591]

I spent a good amount of time last night adding "Front Matter Properties" to my page, I got to the point where I added "scene" as a property and then I added two values "outdoors" and "indoors" for one of my test pages. My DataView query was: where scene = ["indoors"] or scene = ["outdoors"] I noticed if the Scene has only ONE property assigned, the DataView works, but if I have BOTH properties assigned, the query doesn't show anything?? I even tried the same using the tags property - no joy?! I was up late researching the query language etc., when I ran across something that said (paraphrasing) "having MULTIPLE values doesn't currently work" This is a deal breaker for me if I can't figure out how to have a Dataview return results when there are multiple values in a property??! Is there perhaps a "List Query" that I need to learn / use since I'm looking to test for multiple values (List), in a property?? A plugin?, a way to code this myself? Any thoughts appreciated!

[@plus1creator]

I believe you can filter & include multiple tags in a query. That would give you the and / or functionality.

[@williambell4591]

@@plus1creator I watched another YT video that was focused on DataView queries - turns out TABLE supports multiple terms vs LIST which is limited to only 1. I have to study up on Obsidian's DV query language!! I also (for the 1st time 😋) tried doing searches using the [Search Bar] and trust!, that was finding EVERYTHING (including guitar picks that fell under my desk... 🤓🤔) So I'm at least covered using [Search] until I get more familiar w\DV queries 😎👍

[@plus1creator]

@@williambell4591 badass

[@fluxobing]

i hope someone told you already to a) read the error message at least once b) you have to use "-" for the space " " in the attribute and no matter your case, they are all lowercase written in the view. you must be terrible at googling, no insult.

[@plus1creator]

Thank you for the wonderful case study; I always need ideas for my newsletter.

[@fluxobing]

@zavant i dont know what your self set goal with this channel is. if you want to give tips and be educational, i would expect a teacher to have a basic grasp of what they communicate. this video was more a blogpost which revealed that you didnt read with a minute of thought. at ?t=1283 i highlights the place it is complaining about with a aret ^ and says in natural language that it expects an "and" or "or between your two tags. you could have read up on the documentation. you could have checked out the dataview example vault. all you did was "it doesnt work, i dont know how, usually i google stuff until i find something that works" if you want to improve, just skim about the wikipedia article of a structured query language. it can get complex, but you can also keep that simple. so, instead of bragging to your subscribers how some commentators are rude, educate yourself first and then try to communicate to your viewers how you where able to understand it. you should at least correct yourself or address the topic of "you now have to rename all your properties in every vault" claim which just is false information. no offense.

[@angstrom1058]

Thanks for this. Your videos are great. Very helpful :)

[@plus1creator]

Glad you find them helpful!

[@tummalatube]

1) Is there a way to copy the result of a Dataview query from obsidian and paste it into Notepad/MS Word/Excel etc. Any plugin which can help us in doing this? 2) If i have text in obsidian with formatting like [[ ]], bold etc.., how can i copy the text without formatting/[[]] and paste it into notepad/MS Word as plain text? Thanks in advance for your help.

[@plus1creator]

Not quite sure! I haven't needed to pull my dashboard views (dataview) into other places (Word/Excel). The little bit that I tried just now didn't go so well. If I find an answer, I'll update my comment. Thanks!

[@monkeytheo]

Have you tried to copy it with shift+ctrl+v? Maybe it works.

[@lilyofthe4lley]

to paste as plain text I use PowerToys. It's an open source collection of tools from Microsoft and there is a Past As Plain Text tool. There is also a text extractor to extract and copy text from images and other useful tools

[@heinzerbrew]

couldn't you use quotations for values that contain a space? Does anyone know if that works?

[@plus1creator]

Some say it works, some people have said it doesn't work. Now I just use words-with-dashes-between-them. Seems to make Obsidian happy that way.

[@heinzerbrew]

Thanks, I am new to obsidian and I am a bit nervous trying dataview. I think I will wait until I am more comfortable with the basics.@@plus1creator

[@plus1creator]

@@heinzerbrew I stayed away from DataView for a couple years. I like making these videos to show that an idiot like me can stumble through it and make it work.

[@Temmie_Dola]

dataview is so usefull i wonder why dont they implement that function natievly like they did with properties

[@plus1creator]

That sure would be great! I'd love a visual way to tell dataview what to show me. Let me point and click! =^D

[@johnatwood8337]

@@plus1creatorI keep hoping that will happen. I mostly use Notion now because it is so easy to make databases and different views. Having to fiddle with dataview code makes it impossible for me. I can do it, but like for you requires Google every time. And the display of tables is so primitive. In Notion I can see a dozen columns without scrolling, or an unlimited number with scrolling, whereas in dataview I can fit 2 maybe and it looks totally wonky. I’d think it wouldn’t be horrendous to program a pop up interface that lets you choose a display type then add if-then parameters.

[@plus1creator]

@@johnatwood8337 that's a big point in favor of Notion, that's for sure.

[@MarkWhich]

Never understood what Properties so never used them until I watched this video, i'm I''ll be using them now with an extra spice with the Dataview plug-in/.

[@plus1creator]

Hey Mark, that makes me so happy to hear. ::high five::

[@qwertyqart]

how can I set it up that properties automatically is added to every note and then ideally, even populated with creation time and last updated?

[@plus1creator]

Good question, and thanks for asking! That's starting to get into the programming side of things which isn't my strong suit (as you can tell from this video, ha!). But, there's a plug-in called Templater I believe that can set up custom templates, auto-add time that it was created (and other info) with scripts.

[@HiltonT69]

Community Plugin: Templater

[@lilyofthe4lley]

I use Templater and QuickAdd. I have a QuickAdd script that takes a discogs release ID and populate a template with the info I care about (title, artist, release_date, etc) and one that does the same with HowLongToBeat for games. I don't know if Templater can populate custom fields like those one, I haven't used it a lot as of now

[@AnarchySane]

Useless video. The YAML standard does not imply spaces in properties. Just read a d*mn instructions.

[@plus1creator]

I appreciate you taking time out of your day to share that.