Can I make a search rule in Aperture?

Question

I'm using Aperture 3, and fairly familiar with it but trying to organize a library from scratch.  I want to organize projects into folders by year and then event (e.g. 2012 --> Trip to Chicago, Baby Baptism, etc.).  I already have photos organized by event, so now it's a matter of putting them into the right folder by year.  I can just go through each project and look up the dates of the photos in the Info tab, but with about 100 projects that will take me a while.  Is there any way to search for projects by date (in the metadata, not the title, which I've already done) and have them highlight and drag them into a folder?  So far I have only managed to find pictures by year, but it doesn't show me which projects they are in so I don't know which projects to then move into the appropriate folder.

Answer 1

This used to be easy to do, but at some point Aperture's designers changed what happens when you double-click Projects in Projects View, and since then this has become much less easy.  (Projects used to open with the Project(s) selected in the Library Inspector.  Much better behavior, imho.)
A few notes as you set up your work-around:
What you want is already built into Aperture.  Set the grouping feature in Projects View to "Group by Year" (this is an icon to the right of the sorting Pop-up Menu.)
You can auto-sort the Library Inspector.  Options are listed on the Action Menu (click the gear).  Once sorted by date, you should be able to more easily select all Projects (in a Folder) for a given year, and drag them to an existing Folder.
A semi-automated workflow for what you want to do:
Go to Projects View
Group by Year
Click the reveal info badge for the first project in a year
Add a unique character to the Project description field (e.g.: √)
Click the "next" arrow in the Project Info panel
Continue to add the same unique character to each Project's description until you get to the last Project of that year
Click the search field at the top of the Library Inspector
Type your unique character and type {return}
This should select in the Library Inspector all Projects you marked
Drag them to a Folder named for the year
Repeat for each group of Projects grouped by year in Projects View
In the future, I suggest appending the year to your Project Name when you create your Projects.  (I do this manual when I create new Projects on import.)
Message was edited by: Kirby Krieger - formatting, but can't get bullets to show properly indented on my machine :-(