Windows 7 seems to have all these fancy metadata fields that are viewable in Explorer - but no way to edit all of them! I know you can right click -> properties to edit a few things and to scrub metadata, but many of the fields in the Details tab are read-only on most files.

My purpose here is to keep records of files for document control. Right now I am using Excel to monotonously enter all the information I need for a file (project, vendor, customer, revision number, submittal date, etc.), but I thought I could be creative and just attach each of these items directly to files.

I suspect I may not be able to do this in Windows and should probably looking at file cataloging options with better features like reporting. However, I know little about catalogs either so not sure which route to go.