Inventory Management

Is there a way to sort, organize, and manage your inventory if you're not logged into SL? I have tons of time while I'm at work that I could put to good use sorting inventory, but I cannot access SL from my work machine. Any sort of tool or application that can download your inventory for access out of world?

Thanks for any answers.

I'm not aware of any offline solution. About the only answer to inventory management I've been able to come up with for SL is don't bother. It's always going to be a mess. With thousands of items, half of which are named "Object", and none of which you can easily preview to see what they are, there's not a whole lot you can do to keep on top of it.

Sorry, I know that's not the answer you wanted.

Geez, Chosen. I always figured you for one of the persnickety ones whose inventory was always neat and tidy.

Mine is...parts of it, anyway. My Textures folder is a nightmare, though.

Mine is neat and tidy. Is perfect in fact, but then, I am obsessed with it. I remove *everything* unnecessary from folders, including clothing folders, like LM's, etc (if I have the LM in my 'clothing LM's folder, no need to have it again in 10 more folders that clothing is in). I am brutal with the delete key and have never had more than 3,000 items and even that kind of bites, although I know many have more.

That's better. Now I can put you back on your pedestal. 3,000! I broke 15,000 last week. Argh.

One time-saver is to use two inventory windows to speed things up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z19DHCrQVIM

I know it's not an external solution but it does help if your SL time is limited.

Since your inventory resides on the LL servers, you have to be logged in to access it, as far as I know. Mine is in pretty good shape. Not being a creator, I don't have any "objects" and my textures folder is very smal. my total comes in areound 8,000 items.

I don't have any 'objects' either. I immediately rename anything wanting to call itself 'object'. If it doesn't want to allow itself to be renamed I delete it. Just not important enough to be trying to remember what an 'object' is.

*sobs*

I broke 25k last week!!

Back to your question

You can sign on to SL by going through http://ajaxlife.net

It will allow you to work on your inventory. You will be seen inworld, but you will not be able to "see" your graphical surroundings. You WILL be able to see and work with your inventory.

However, I've been having a tough time running ajaxlife lately because of their servers, not SLs.

Why is it that whenever people talk about logging in to SL while at work, I have visions of air-traffic controllers spanking each other on the dancefloor!

I keep my inventory trim, like I keep my tummy! It's only about 3500 items because I'm good at weeding it of unwanted stuff.

Heh, don't I wish. I tried to keep it organized way back in the beginning, but it wasn't long before the odd "Object" here and there began to pile up, and then it was all over.

It was really difficult in the days before multiple select in inventory. I think a lot of old inventories, for creators anyway, got into a mess back then and we've just been treading water trying not to drown ever since.

I haven't done it in awhile, but I use to find camping chairs to sit in while I organized my inventory. I normally think camping chairs are a ridiculous way to make a few pennies, but doing it while organizing my inventory at the same time kept me focused on what I was doing (since camping is so damn boring), plus I earned a few Lindens in the process.

How about a simplified client that doesn't load the 3d world but allows you to see your inventory and move things around from folder to folder?

/me gasps and wonders if she'll ever get back down to 25k

That might be your inventory Chosen, but I've found that if your inventory is a mess, then simply start at the top and work your way through each folder tidying things up, rezzing when needed to see what stuff is, and simply work from top to bottom. You don't need hours and hours to work though a messy inventory, simply throw an hour here a half hour there, whenever you have the free time, and within a few days, you can straighten out your inventory. Once it's straight, it's easier if you try to stay on top of it, and make maintaining it a priority. In other words, the more often you straighten it out, the less time it takes to get through it. As far as having so many objects named Object, that's your own self inflicted wound. Personally, I wont take an object named 'Object' into my inventory. I make naming it, which takes like 5 seconds, a priority before even taking it into my inventory. If someone offers me an object named Object, I decline and ask them to name it before giving it to me.

There's really no excuse for not maintaining your inventory. Everyone runs well, RIGHT HERE, and start's bitching about LL when the asset servers head south, but, at the same time, some people have hundreds of thousands of useless objects taking up space on the asset server, 99 percent of which they never use. I yelled at a friend because in over a year, she hadn't emptied her trash, which alone shaved 10's of thousands of objects off the size of her inventory (she had bee complaining that her inventory searches were taking forever). I bet if everyone cleaned up their act, the asset servers wouldn't crash as much.

Moral of the story... stop reading this, and go start (not finish, just start) cleaning your inventory.

This does not let you actually manipulate your inworld inventory but it can help a bit. It will read your inventory contents and load it into a spreadsheet for you to be able to move around as you wish. It will help you create a log to tell you what to delete or move when you get back inworld.

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/SL_My_Inventory_Viewer

Definately do it folder by folder, bit by bit..you'll be amazed how you can trim it back.

I group all my landmarks onto named notecards...one for shoe shops, one for sandboxes, etc.....then just deleted them all. It's so easy to find stuff now and it trimmed the inv. right down. And I can hand out themed landmark cards to people.

Texture folder is still a bubbling mess though. Too scared to look in there.

I dumped most of my textures into personal HippoImage vendors standing on my sky platform (grouped by subject). Then I just take out what I need, when I need it.

I'd love it if there was a way to truly organize your inventory offline!

I'm probably the last person that should be giving you advice on this with my messy 28K + inventory but a couple of easy things to do is search for common things like hovertext scripts or give inventory scripts that you might end up with from shopping. If there are certain places you shop at a lot you may have ended up with multiple LMs from their store so search for those and delete. Things you might not use very often but don't want to delete you can just store in the contents tab of a plain old prim which I did for some things like 7seas fish.

That's brilliant! Thanks!

Yes, if you just keep at it, come up with a workable pattern of folders/subfolders and the like, you can keep your inventory very organized.

Couple things to note: Symbols always sort to the top - so you can keep key folders at the top of the sort list by starting them with a * or %.

System Folders: Those folders you can't delete or change.. keep them close to empty for best performance. Landmarks will slow down your Maps, Calling Cards will slow down your friendslist and groups, Snapshots and Textures will slow down your inventory searches and loading of images.

Move them to other folders, or storage devices. Fun thing with calling cards - make a folder, put some cards in there, then right mouse click on folder and start a 'group' chat!

Keep it up, and you can easily be like me - almost 67k items, organized, and no issues!

And yes, all 67k items are items that I use regularly, or need on hand. I have about 125k items in storage boxes.

I'm an avid fan of 7Seas fishing - addicted maybe - and it sure has filled up my inventory. But, I usually try to clean it up by having my AV play her harp while I spend (hours) cleaning it up....

Lately I've been getting depressed about my inventory mess and trying to find the time to sort through it all because it's way out of hand. As odd as it sounds, your response made me feel a whole lot better. I'm not the only one out here who thinks the same way.

The question is, though, will LL ever make improvements to our inventory that will actually help us sort the mess?