Windows Live Taskforce

Please add "Invert Selection" as a menu item in WL Photo Gallery

Submitted by mjflynt on March 14, 2009 to Annoyance, Usability

Problem: You cannot invert your selection in WL Photo Gallery. Any application that offers "Select All" should also offer "Invert Selection."

Solution: Adding a menu item to invert your selection will make you life easier. For example, if you select your first set of photos by clicking on a tag, then you select all, then click on another tag. This presents all the photos from the second tag, but only the photos you actually selected from the first tag are still selected. Basically this is the set of photos with BOTH tags. Using an invert selection now would then select all the photos that are in the second tag but not in the first.

Here is an bad example: Click on a tag "wife" to be presented with all your pictures of your wife. These pictures are presented, but they are not necessarily selected. Now select them all - one way is to type control-A. Now click another tag - say "girlfriend" and you'll be presented with every picture of your girlfriends - most likely including your wife from before you married her. Now, the ones of your wife WILL BE selected, while those of all your other girl friends won't be. Now, how do you delete the old girlfriend pictures so you don't have to sleep on the couch? Well, if you had an "Invert Selection" you would just invert the selection and delete them. (At least hide them away somewhere so she doesn't find them!)

Anyway, I am finding that not having this function is causing me to resort to complex set operations using temporary tags.

Picasa has both an "Invert Selection" as well as a "Clear Selection." I'm not so concerned about the clear as that is easily accomplished other ways.But "invert" is really necessary and it's exclusion Photo Gallery is a functionality loss.

Also note that Windows 7 has added this feature back to Windows Explorer by popular demand!

Severity: High

Impact: High

Status: Not fixed