Challenge Yourself discussion

One of the largest objections to these challenges is that often new shelves must be created.

I used to keep my shelf number to a minimum and often purged some that I decided were clutter. My main reason for this was the tedious exercise of scrolling up and down the drop down box looking for the proper shelf for placement. A guy named Martin, changed all that for me by sharing the following tip.

When picking shelves you don't have to scroll up and down the list, you can filter the shelves by typing the first letter(s).

When the drop-down menu is on display, just type the first letter of the shelf that you want to check. That shelf and all others beginning with that letter will be displayed.

e.g. If I type in a "d", my doorstops, double-dog-dare, double-dog-dare-US, double dog-dare-UN and dying-to-read shelves are the only ones displayed.

If I had typed in "dou", I would have gotten only my challenge shelves (Double-Dog-Dare...)

A much more managable list.

Thaks for sharing: is a very useful tip.

For the Challenges I use 2012-(Whatever the Challenge Name) that way when picking shelves it is always at the top of the list.

Thanks Almeta that is a useful tip, because I have many genre sub tags to use on each book, I be using that all the time.

You are both welcome. I couldn't sanely get through my list without this.

For the life of me I can not find the post where you told me how to use tags!! Will you repost it for me please?

Kevin wrote: "For the Challenges I use 2012-(Whatever the Challenge Name) that way when picking shelves it is always at the top of the list.

Thanks Almeta that is a useful tip, because I have many genre sub tag..."

That is a great idea Kevin - I put 2012 on my challenges - but I put it at the end - I don't know why I didn't think about putting it first!!! DUH!!

Linda wrote: "Kevin wrote: "For the Challenges I use 2012-(Whatever the Challenge Name) that way when picking shelves it is always at the top of the list.

Thanks Almeta that is a useful tip, because I have ma..."

I went through many different name schemes before I hit on that one, and I'm a computer guy who should have remembered that numbers get sorted ahead of characters.
It's fairly easy to change the tag name and re-tag, especially this early in the year when the number of read books is still manageable. In fact I just found an easier way in goodreads help section.
: edit-a-shelf-for-multiple-books-at-once text

Valencia wrote: "For the life of me I can not find the post where you told me how to use tags!! Will you repost it for me please?"

Tags are also called shelves, take a look at this : create-custom-shelves

I just reviewed these comments for 2016 and am not archiving this thread.

Kevin's suggestion of USING BATCH EDIT is an excellent tool. In 2012, I probably wasn't ready to wrap my head around it...BUT in 2015, I found this feature was a life saver.

Here's what I mostly used it for: 2015 was the year for completing (ha ha) series books. Of course I found that I added plenty based on what my friends were reading.

To shelve a series of books, I first just went down the line of books and added them all with the "Want To Read" button. This placed them on "My Books" list.

Used the search box in "My Books" to type in the series name. Just those books display. Click the "Batch Edit" link. Then click on the "Select All' link.

Change the name of the shelf using the drop down box and then click "add books to this shelf".

I can mark these books for my serial shelf, then do the process again for my genre shelf, then again for my audio, then again for my foreign country shelf, and so on until all applicable shelves are chosen.

Easy-Peasy!!...DONE!

I'm sure you can find a use for this feature.