Import tags from text file

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I am reviving an old thread, but my question seems trivial, so not sure it warrants a new post.
And maybe the info I have found only apply to older versions (before v2.62??), and things have changed in the meantime.
Having said that, I just want to make sure ...

Regarding import from text file, I had read this :

But until now, I have always used a much simpler way. I just selected a bunch of songs in the navigation window, and I changed tags based on a text file:

  • with the same number of lines as the songs selected
  • the order of the lines/info in the text file is the same as the the order you see in the navigation window

Are there any other conditions I have to be aware of ?

Is it still better / more stable / more robust to use "%_path%" to match records?
Please say "no", because in my personal, not-too-technically-inclined, opinion, it seems a lot simpler and less error-prone to just use navigation window ... :stuck_out_tongue:

Maybe I'll quickly explain what I want to do, and you can advise whether my workflow will work.

I need excel to do some re-naming that MP3Tag apparently cannot do (thread), but not just for a few songs, but an entire subset of my library (about 10k songs).
So what I want to do is :

  • select all songs in the navigation window (and I make sure that MP3Tag points to the directory that contains only the songs I want to change);
  • export to CSV (actually I'll use pipe | character instead of , or ; as I am sure it is easy, visible, well supported by Excel and MP3Tag)
  • import in Excel (check of course that # of rows correspond with # of songs in navigation window of MP3Tag)
  • do my hocus-pocus in Excel, delete all stuff I don't need, and export (the two columns I changed) again as a CSV (with | delimiter), and check with Notepad++ that the output file still has the same number of lines
  • txt>tag conversion in MP3Tag (%album%|%compilation%)
    For the last step, my MP3Tag still has the same navigation window as before (I did not touch MP3Tag between the export and txt>tag actions), and all songs are still selected.

So I don't see the need to work with a %_path% entry in export and import. But maybe I am wrong, and my method will not work because there are too many files or other constraints that I am not aware of?

Thank you for your help