View collection as a list.	View collection as an image gallery.
View details for a single item.	View images in larger windows.
(Click on images for a full-size view.)

And take your collection with you on your smartphone or tablet, using the free Recollector App:

Recollector App on an iPhone or iPod touch			Recollector App on an Android phone or tablet
			(Click on images for a full-size view.)
Recollector App HD on an iPad

Whatever you collect - art, coins, maps, shells, trading cards, comic books, vintage photographs, etc. etc. - the value of your collection, and your enjoyment of it, are greatly enhanced by having a good record of what you own.

Recollector is software for collectors. There are a number of software packages that have been developed to help people catalog collections. Some of these software packages are specialized (for example, for wine collectors) and are tied to databases that let you look up information - including prices - about the items in your collection. Some are extremely elaborate - and very expensive - and are aimed at museums or other large institutional collections. And then there are many low-end, very inexpensive programs; these are mostly simple list managers that let you record a handful of attributes - and perhaps a few images - of each of the items in a collection. The low-end programs typically have little flexibility, and often they provide you with much less capability than simply using a spreadsheet or word processing program to keep track of your collection (which, in fact, is something that a lot of collectors do).

Recollector was first released in 2007. It initially had a different name ("M.R.P. Collection Manager"); its current name dates from early 2012. The program has continually evolved and improved based on suggestions and feedback from customers. The product name, Recollector, reflects that this sofware is for collectors, and that it is a tool that helps collectors know and remember ("recollect") what is in their collections.

For a video introduction to Recollector, view the first video on the Demonstration and Training Videos page.

With the Recollector App, the smartphone companion to Recollector, you can take your collection with you on the road. The Recollector App is available in a version for the iPhone or iPod touch (running version 4.3 or later of iOS), a version (called Recollector App HD) for the iPad (running version 4.3 or later of iOS), and in a version for Android smartphones or tablets (running Version 2.1 or later of the Android operating system). The iPhone/iPod version, the iPad version, and the Android version of the Recollector App are all available as free downloads. Go to the Demonstration and Training Videos page for short video introductions to the Recollector App. To look at the Recollector App documentation from the Windows version of the Recollector User's Guide, click here for a description of either the iPhone/iPod and iPad versions or the Android version. Or for Recollector App documentation from the Mac version of the Recollector User's Guide, click here for a description that applies to all three versions (iPhone/iPod, the iPad, and Android).

Syncing your data between Recollector on the Mac or PC and the Recollector App on your mobile device is easy: You can use Dropbox to to simply drag and drop your collection data into a Dropbox folder, and it will show up a short time later on the Recollector App on your mobile device. Click here for more information about using Dropbox with Recollector.

The Recollector App comes with a small sample collection. So even if you are not yet using Recollector, you can download and try out the Recollector App to see what it looks like and how it works. Note, however, that in order to keep the size of the download file small (and the download time short), the images in the sample collection are provided in thumbnail form only; no full size images are included. So the sample collection data will not let you see how full-size images can be viewed in an image viewer by double-clicking on the thumbnail images. But when you move your own collection data to the Recollector App, you can choose to include full-size images, and then you will get the full-size image-viewer capability.

What makes a good collection management program?

Flexible - Every collector will have his or her own idea about what attributes are important to track. Perhaps you collect paintings, and, in addition to recording the price you paid for each painting, you want to separately keep track of the price you paid for framing each piece and, perhaps, also information about any restoration work you had done (who performed the work; how much it cost). These may sound like unusual requests, but just about any collector will have ideas about what to record about their collection, and any software being used as the collection database should be flexible enough to allow this.

Recollector comes with a number of built-in templates for different kinds of collections, and user-contributed collection templates provide additional options. But you are always free to modify a collection's design to exactly meet your own needs. You can add an unlimited number of user-defined fields, using a variety of built-in data types (text, numeric, date, currency, dimension, image/audio/video).

Functional - A collection manager should allow you to do more than just enter and look at your data records. You should be able to:

• Search
• Sort
• Subset
• Import and Export data
• Print & report
• Customize
• Handle long (multi-sentence / multi-paragraph) text
• Handle images
• Handle audio or video clips
• Handle arbitrary kinds of associated documents
• Handle multiple collections
• Allow easy backup of data
• Allow encryption of collection data

Robust - It may seem silly to mention this, but many programs are not designed to handle unusual data. If a program gives an error (or, worse yet, crashes and loses your data) when you mistype (for example, enter a non-numeric value for a numeric field) or request some inappropriate operation (for example, ask to display images for a record that has no images), the program can turn into more of a nuisance than an aid.

Easy to use - It is a bit of a cliché to say that a software program should be easy to use. But it is certainly true that if it is hard to figure out how to use a program (either due to obscure methods needed to perform various operations, or inadequate - or wholly absent - documentation), it is a real drawback.

MapRecord Publications has worked very hard to make Recollector flexible, functional, robust and easy to use.

One other characteristic that we have tried to build into Recollector is a certain elegance and professionalism in the presentation of your collection data. Recollector allows you to control formatting, including:

• support for text styling, such as italic, bold, or underlined text, superscripts, and multi-paragraph formatting
• support for special characters (accented characters and symbols)
• user-specified font choice for displayed or printed report pages
• support for hyperlinks for navigating to related records
• support for hyperlinks that bring up footnote-style notes
• support for hyperlinks that bring up desired web pages in your browser
• control over thumbnail image size within a page displaying an item's details
• complete control over the order of fields within a page displaying an item's details
• clean pagination in printed reports

To give you an idea of what these features provide, take a look at the image (labeled "View details for a single item") on the left side of the second row of images at the top of this page. Click on the image to get a full-size view of the window, where you will see examples of some of these formatting capabilities.

To further explore Recollector, you can examine the complete Recollector User's Guide which is available on the web. Read it or browse it to get a full idea of what the program is and what it can do. The Recollector Help Book for the Mac version of Recollector is also available on the web.

The Windows and Macintosh versions of Recollector are nearly identical. But for a short description of the few places where the two versions differ, read this document.

Click here to see a list of the features and fixes that have been added to Recollector in revisions over the past few years.

MS/Windows version:

System requirements: Recollector runs under any of the modern versions of MS/Windows (Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10, Windows 11 or later).

Mac OS X version:

System requirements: Recollector requires version 11.0 (Big Sur) or later of OS X.

The latest version of Recollector can be downloaded by clicking on the appropriate button below. If you don't have a license key, Recollector will run in "demo" mode. If you already have a licensed version of Recollector, you can update to the latest version by downloading and installing again.

The demo version of Recollector is a fully functional trial version. There is no time limit restriction on its use. The only difference between the demo version and the fully licensed version is that with the demo version you are restricted to a maximum of 25 data records in a collection. If you decide to purchase the license key for the fully licensed version, you will not need to download the software again. The license key that you will be sent (via e-mail) will convert your existing demo version into a fully licensed, unrestricted version. Click the appropriate button to go to the download page:

     

To get the latest version of the companion mobile app, Recollector App, use your smartphone (or tablet), and go to the iTunes App Store (for the iPhone/iPod Touch version or the iPad version [named Recollector App HD]) or Google's Play Store (for the Android phone or tablet version) and search for "Recollector App". The app is a free download.

Update to the latest version of Recollector

The current version of Recollector for Windows is 3.3.24.
The current version of Recollector for Mac OS X is 1.8.20.

You can find out what version you are currently running by looking at the About Recollector dialog, accessed from the Help menu of the collection window under Windows and accessed from the Recollector menu under Mac OS X.

To see what has been changed in recent versions of Recollector, click here.

If you are running an older version, you can update by simply downloading and re-installing. Click on the appropriate "Download Recollector" button, above, and you will be taken to the download page, from which you can download the latest version. Don't worry if you already have licensed the product; the download and re-install will not lose your collection data and it will not lose your license information. You will still be running the fully licensed version.

If you are running a newer version of Recollector, there is an even easier way to stay up-to-date: Choose Check for Updates on the Help menu. This will open a browser window which will show you whether your current version of Recollector needs updating. If it does, a button is provided right there that lets you download the latest version of the program.

Purchase a license key for Recollector

After you have installed the demo version of Recollector and taken it for a test run or two, you can purchase a license key for $49. This allows you to convert the demo version into a fully functional, unrestricted version. Also, licensing Recollector entitles you to receive customer support and product updates. Licensing is a one-time operation: A Recollector license is permanent, and there are no annual update or maintenance fees.

Purchase the Recollector license key using PayPal, by clicking the PayPal button, below. You do not need a PayPal account, since you can pay with a credit card as a PayPal guest. Or, if you do have a PayPal account, you can pay from your account. The Recollector license key will be e-mailed to you as soon as the purchase is completed, so you should expect it to arrive within a few minutes. The e-mail will also contain simple instructions for how to enter the license key.