My Movies: How to use the new list system
Last Updated: 4pm PST 4 October 2011
Finding your lists...
You can find all of your lists on your lists page: http://www.imdb.com/profile/lists
You will find a link to this page in the top navigation under: "Community" > "Your Lists". For the next few months, you will also find that the "My Movies" link is still available in the "Movies" section of the top navigation.
Adding an item to one of your lists from the title page...
You can add an item from the IMDb title page to your Watchlist using the "Add to Watchlist" button to the right of the movie poster on the title page. If you are using the old-style view of the title page, the button is in the left column.
If you want to add the movie to a list that isn't your Watchlist, click on the pulldown on the right side of the Watchlist button. From this dropdown you can see which of your lists the title is in and you can add the movie to any of your lists.
Coming soon...
- The dropdown is only available on the new style title page today. We will add it to the old-style view of the title page soon.
To see all title lists on the site using the compact view, follow these instructions:
- Go to any of your lists, such as your Watchlist: http://imdb.com/watchlist
- Click on the "edit list" link at the top right hand corner.
- From the edit page, click on the "Change list settings" link
- You will see a settings box that has 2 different new settings -- one controls sort order, the other controls the list view.
- Choose your own preferences, these will now apply to all lists on the site.
- Now, revisit your list to confirm that the preference has been set: http://imdb.com/watchlist
- As long as you are logged in with your account, you won't have to reset these preferences.
You can also use the above instructions to set a default sort order for all of your lists.
Moving items between your lists...
To move or copy items from one list to another, start by finding your list and navigating to compact view (instructions are listed above). Now, use the checkboxes at the left hand side of the list to choose the items that you wish to move or delete. Once you've selected the items to move, use the dropdowns at the top of the page to choose whether you want to move or copy, and to select the list that you want to move or copy the items to.
If you want to use the compact view all the time, follow the instructions above to make it your default.
Figuring out which of your lists a movie is in
To see which of your lists a given movie is in, visit the title page for the movie. Find the 'Watchlist' button in the top middle of the page. Use the dropdown menu on the right side of the button to see all of your lists. You will see a check mark next to each of the lists that the item is on. You will also have the ability to add the movie to any of your lists or to remove it from any of your lists.
Finding a movie in a very long list
Finding a particular movie in a list with thousands of items is difficult. Many of you are used to using control f to find the movie in a display of every movie in your list. This no longer works as well as it did in the old My Movies system. Here are a few suggestions for new ways to find a movie in a long list. Please continue to tell us about how you need to look up movies and whether these suggestions are helpful to you so that we can improve the system on your behalf.
Suggestions:
- You can view your list in the compact view. This will allow you to see 250 items at once instead of 100. More details are available in "Setting your list preference to compact view" above.
- You can use the 'refine list' panel on the right to cut your list into a much shorter one. For example, if you are looking for the 1970's comedy Butterflies are Free, you could refine your list by genre: comedy and release year: 1970-1979. This is inefficient if you know the exact name that you're searching for, but will have the additional benefit of helping you find a movie when you can't remember the name.
On every one of your lists, you'll see a box in the right hand column that shows the most recently modified 3-5 of your lists. It also has a link to see all of your lists. You can use these links to navigate between lists. You can move items between lists using the check boxes in compact view. For more information, please see "Moving items between your lists" above.
Reading and editing your notes on each movie...
You can see the notes that you've written for each movie in detailed view and in compact view. The full note is displayed for each item in detailed view. In compact view, you can see a note icon that you can hover over to read your notes. To edit your notes, you will still need to navigate to edit mode.
Adding a note to an item...
To add a note to an item, navigate to your list. Use the edit button in the top right hand corner to enter edit mode. Once you're in edit mode, you can type a note next to any item. Save the comment using the save button.
Exporting one of your lists to excel
Every list has an 'export' link at the bottom right hand corner. You can use this link to get a version of your list in Excel or a text editor. When you export, you export your entire list. There is no pagination. Exporting is a good tool for backing up your lists or for doing power analysis.
Sharing one of your lists or your ratings history with other people
In the top right corner of your list, you will see 'List is private' or 'List is public'. You can change this setting by clicking the edit list link and then clicking on the 'Change list settings' link from the edit page. For ratings, the 'list settings' link is available right from the top right hand corner. Once you have made your list public, you can share the url in the browser's tool bar with your friends so that they can see your list.
Adding movies to lists from the data-centered or old-style version of the title page
You can find an Add to Watchlist button in the left column of old-style title pages. Once you have added an item to your Watchlist, you can use the bulk tools to move them to one of your other lists. In the future, we will add the dropdown to the data-centered title page. You will then be able to add items directly to any one of your lists from the title page.
Preventing other IMDb users from seeing my My Movies lists
Most My Movies lists were marked as private. This was the default setting under My Movies. All of these private lists are still private. You can doublecheck by looking at the top right hand corner of your list for the phrase 'List is private'.
If you marked your list as public under My Movies, it will still be public. You can doublecheck this on the top right hand corner as well. As a courtesy to My Movies users, we are not displaying the My Movies lists as 'Featured Lists' on name and title pages. If you want to share a list with other users, you can do so via the URL, but we won't advertise your list to other users.
Some of my data appears to be missing
There were several errors made during the migration of data from My Movies to the lists service. We believe that we have now fixed all of these issues.
If you still have a problem, please report the issue to customer service. You can do this by navigating to one of your lists that has the issue. Then use the 'Report this list' link in the right hand column, and choose the reason "other". We are looking through reports one by one and hope to get to each report within a week.
To read more about lists
To learn more about the new list system, visit our list help page.
Get an update on the current state of feature requests
Over the past week, many of you have asked for specific features or reported an issue. We're tracking a list of those issues in this board post. You can check there to make sure that your issue is covered and to see the progress.
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