Inventory management tips

Searching for an item in your inventory can be a frustrating affair; some Residents have over 150,000 inventory items to sort through! Large inventories can present many problems, from difficulty finding objects to technical problems like inventory lists which fail to load completely or even difficulty logging in.

Luckily, you have many handy features at your disposal to help you organize and keep track of all your worldly possessions. 

Get organized

The first step toward keeping track of your items is keeping them organized. By creating a system of folders in your inventory, you can easily categorize objects you've acquired.

You can make as many folders in your inventory as you want, but try to create your folders using a nested system -- this means having a few major category folders in the top level My Inventory folder, then creating sub-folders in those major categories.

To create a new folder:

1. Right-click an existing folder in the Inventory window and choose New Folder. 
2. Give your folders names that really help you remember what you put in them. "Cars," "Board Game Pieces," and "Hippo Costume Parts" are good examples, but a more detailed naming system may be necessary if your inventory is extensive.

Be specific

How can you best organize your objects such that you can easily find them later? You may find that sorting items into categories can help narrow your search considerably.

For example: Having distinct categories for textures can make it easier to find similar content:

• Textures:
  • Fabric
  • Glass
  • Liquid
  • Metal
  • Stone
  • Wood

Once you're comfortable with your folder structure, move things into the new folders (just drag-and-drop) so that you can find them easily. You can also select and move multiple items at the same time by holding down the Shift key.

Organization tips

• You can create multiple copies of objects in your inventory. For instance, you may want to wear the same shirt as part of two different outfits: to make a second copy of the shirt, right-click it, select Copy, select the folder for your second outfit, right-click it, and select Paste. For more information on managing your wardrobe, see Outfits.
• You can open a second inventory window for easy organizing (drag items from one window to a folder in the other window) and easy passing of objects (drag things from one window to a calling card in the other). To open a second window, click the Gear icon at the bottom of the Inventory window and select New Inventory Window.
• Empty your trash often! Reducing the total number of items in your inventory helps it load faster.

If you find yourself with a large number of duplicate objects cluttering your inventory, you can use the following procedure to find and eliminate them:

1. Open your Inventory window by clicking the Inventory button at the side of your screen.
2. Enter the exact name of the duplicated item in the search bar at the top of the Inventory window, and press the Enter key.
3. Wait a few moments while Second Life indexes and searches your inventory. If you have a very large number of objects in your inventory, this step may take a few minutes.
4. Select all the duplicate items found in your search. Make sure to leave at least one for yourself!
5. Press the delete key.
6. To restore your normal Inventory view, click the X button in the search bar, or close your Inventory window and reopen it.

Received items

The Received items feature allows you to conveniently manage all recently received Marketplace items in your inventory.  Whenever you receive new inventory items or folders from shopping on the Marketplace, they appear in an expandable pane at the bottom of the Inventory window. To use your newly purchased items, drag the folder either into your main Inventory window for storage and organization, or drag an object icon onto the ground to be rezzed. You can also right-click an object and select "Add" to attach it to your avatar; many purchases arrive as a HUD which unpacks the content for you when you wear it. ℹ️  Important Note Be sure to move your purchases out of your Received Items folder! Filling up the Received Items folder can cause inventory issues or potential content loss.

Other useful features

There are several subtle-but-welcome features on the Inventory window, including:

X Marks the Spot: An X, which clears the current query when pressed, appears at the very right of the search bar when you've entered text.

If you've never used filters before, try this to get a hands-on feel:

1. In the Inventory window, click the My Inventory tab and open a lot of folders by clicking on the white arrows. As they expand, the arrows rotate to point downwards, indicating that the folders are open.
2. Click on the Gear icon and select Show Filters.
3. In the Filters window, uncheck all the category checkboxes and watch things "disappear." Don't worry, you haven't lost anything! It's all still there; it's just hidden. Re-check the boxes to make the items reappear.

You can also toggle all item types with a single click by using the All and None buttons in the Filters window. Below these is Always show folders, which displays all folders when doing a search. Unchecking it displays folders containing matches.

Advanced Inventory Management

There are a number of other tricks which aren't immediately obvious but are extremely useful for highly-efficient organization of your inventory.

Multi-View: Click on the Gear icon and select New Inventory Window so you have two inventory windows open at once. Now you can move items back and forth between two folders and have a different view in each one. What's more, each window has its own set of filters.

Drag and Drop: This is very useful if you want to sort your recent items. Just click-and-drag any folder or item (Ctrl+Left-click to select multiples) from within one tab to the other tab's title: the view switches immediately. Move the cursor over the folder you're looking for, and release the mouse button. The folders spring back quickly, and your items have been moved!

Filter Master: Check Since Logoff or enter a time for both tabs, and you have what amounts to two Recent tabs. If unsure of your changes, just use the Gear icon menu to Reset Filters. 

How to get an inventory item-count

To find out how many items you have in your inventory, type anything into the search field at the top of the Inventory window. Wait a few moments while Second Life indexes your inventory, then look at the item count in the title bar of the window.

Tips for recovering lost items

If an item mysteriously disappears from your inventory, use the the procedures below to locate it.

• Click the Inventory button on the toolbar and select the Recent tab. Items returned since last log off will be stored here.
• Clear the Second Life Viewer's cache. 
• Search for the item by entering its name in the Filter Inventory field of the Inventory window.
• Search the Lost And Found folder.
• Search the Trash folder.
• Search folders listed at the top of the Inventory window.
• Your filter settings may be hiding some of your inventory items. To reset them, click the Gear icon at the bottom left of the Inventory window and choose Reset Filters.

How to find the UUID of an inventory item

If you make extensive use of LSL scripts, you may want to know the UUID (Universally Unique Identifier) of a texture or sound in your avatar's inventory. You can easily copy any inventory item's UUID to your computer's clipboard by right-clicking it and selecting Copy Asset UUID. This method is great for finding sound and texture UUIDs, but is not always effective for other inventory types. Here is a short list of exceptions: A notecard's UUID changes every time it is edited and saved. There is no way to find an object's UUID until it is rezzed inworld; this is because each rezzed copy of the object must have a unique UUID. Similarly, if you take an object into your inventory, it is assigned a new UUID the next time you rez it. There is no way to find an LSL script's UUID while it is in your inventory, for similar reasons. You must have full permissions on any inventory item to copy its UUID; this also applies to calling cards, which are by nature "no-transfer" items.

LSL has several detection functions that can help determine an object or avatar's UUID. If you are interested in learning to use LSL for this purpose, see the LSL Portal.