Quick answer: File Explorer exposes editable tags through installed property handlers, commonly for JPG photos and Office documents. PDFs, ZIP files, text and source code do not normally have an editable Tags field. Tag+ and Rate+ from Productivity Plus Pack add tags and ratings to over 60 supported file extensions from the right-click menu and make them searchable in File Explorer.
What Windows can tag on its own
Windows has had file tags for years. Open a photo's Properties, go to the Details tab, and there's a Tags field. Type a few words, and you can later search for them in File Explorer with tags:.
The catch shows up as soon as you try the same thing on a PDF, a ZIP archive or a text file: there's no Tags field at all. File Explorer needs a writable property handler for that file type. A format may support metadata without Windows providing a Tags field for it.
Which file types support tags
In Windows alone, tags work for formats that carry their own metadata, most commonly JPEG and TIFF photos and Microsoft Office documents. Support depends on the installed property handler as well as the format; many common formats have no editable Tags field in Explorer.
| File type | Windows alone | With Tag+ and Rate+ | Where the tags are kept |
|---|---|---|---|
| JPG / JPEG, TIFF photos | Yes | Yes | Inside the file |
| Word, Excel, PowerPoint | Depends on the installed handler | Yes, for supported extensions | Depends on the active handler; see the compatibility guide |
| HEIC photos and MP4 videos | Depends on the format and installed extensions | Yes | Inside the file |
| PNG, GIF, BMP, WEBP images | No | Yes | Hidden NTFS stream |
| No | Yes | Hidden NTFS stream | |
| TXT, Markdown, CSV, JSON, logs | No | Yes | Hidden NTFS stream |
| ZIP and RAR archives | No | Yes | Hidden NTFS stream |
| Source code and scripts (C, C++, C#, PowerShell, batch files and more) | No | Yes | Hidden NTFS stream |
| Folders | No | Yes | On the folder itself |
Tag+ and Rate+ support over 60 file extensions. For common examples, see How to star-rate PDFs, documents and more.
Why PDFs, ZIPs and source code are hard to tag
Windows reads and writes tags through small components called property handlers, one per file type. A property handler knows where in a particular format the tags live — in a JPEG's EXIF/XMP data, or in an Office document's document properties — and Windows Search reads them through the same handler.
- PDF files can contain metadata, but Windows doesn't include a property handler that writes tags into them, so File Explorer has nowhere to put them.
- ZIP and RAR archives are containers for other files. Archive comments are not the same as the searchable Tags property exposed by File Explorer.
- Text, Markdown, CSV and source code files are just text. There's no metadata area at all — anything added would become part of the file's content, and could break a script or a program.
So the tags need to live somewhere other than inside the file — without becoming a separate database that gets out of sync the moment you move or rename a file.
How Tag+ and Rate+ solve the problem
Tag+ and Rate+ from Productivity Plus Pack use the best place available for each file type:
- Inside the file for formats that support it, such as JPG, TIFF, HEIC and MP4 — so those tags travel with the file wherever it goes.
- In a hidden NTFS stream for everything else, such as PDF, TXT, ZIP and code. An NTFS stream is a hidden part of the same file on NTFS drives: the file's content isn't changed, and the tags move and rename along with it.
Productivity Plus Pack also adds its own property handler to Windows for these file types. That's what makes the tags show up like native Windows tags — on thumbnails, in File Explorer's Tags column, and in Windows Search.
Tag supported files in four steps
- Select one or more files in File Explorer.
- Right-click and choose a tag or a star rating — or press Ctrl+Win+Alt+T followed by a number key (1-9).
- See the tags and stars on thumbnails in the Medium, Large and Extra Large icon views.
- Find them again from the Search filters section in Explorer's navigation pane, where every tag and rating has a one-click filter.