Collection Explorer helps you manage your collectibles. You can group your collections into categories, and customize the way item information is stored and viewed. Collection Explorer looks and operates like Microsoft's Windows Explorer, making it easy to learn.

The left pane of the main window lists all of the categories in your collection, arranged in a tree. Categories can contain subcategories, and so on. The categories that come pre-installed with Collection Explorer are only a starting point, intended to be useful to the average collector.

You can add and delete categories as you see fit. The right pane of the main window is a table, arranged as rows and columns, similar to a spreadsheet. It contains information about the items in your collection, such as each item's name, the quantity of each item, its value, etc.

When creating a new collection, you arrange the columns as you want them. You specify the name of the column, the type of data it will hold (such as Date or Currency) and the maximum number of characters. Collection Explorer can create and maintain many collections, much like a word processor can create and open many documents.