I’ve collected a lot of music over the years, to ensure I don’t accidentally delete anything and have to go through the struggles of restoring it, I have setup a lot of shortcuts to folders I’m working on or to music I want to listen.
This method lets me rearrange, delete, move, etc the shortcuts I’m working on or want to listen to without having to rearrange, delete or move the actual music files themselves.
Since the release v3.31a when trying to open a folder with music in it by clicking on the shortcut to the folder I get the error message ‘You have to select a folder containing audio files’ (translated to English) with the following message below ‘The folder name is not valid’ (original message in English).
If I directly go to the folder of the shortcut MP3tag lets me open the folder without problem. Both the shortcut and the actual folder containing the music have the same name(format) “country of origin - artist (year)”.
I just created a lnk-file on the desktop.
I can right-click on the file and open MP3tag which in return switches to the folder and opens the containing files.
I can drag&drop the lnk-file into MP3tag with the same result.
If I use File>Open or the button in the toolbar which in return opens a "Select folder" system dialogue leads to the mixed-language error message.
I checked with Word and Firefox and both programs interpret the lnk file to open the linked folder (yet, the difference is that these programs look for individual files and not folders as an object to open).
So until the behaviour is changed in MP3tag I recommend to use the right-click method or the drag&drop method.
Drag/drop into mp3tag program works wonders for now, it’s a lot simpler compared to finding all the folders directly.
Thank you so much for providing your workaround.
[2025-06-26] CHG: symbolic links to folders are not dereferenced in open and save dialogs to more likely preserve user intent and follow platform conventions.
I've described details of this change at
Unfortunately, it's not possible to let the Windows open dialogs resolve Shell links (*.lnk shortcuts) and not dereference symbolic links and junctions points at the same time.
I hope the workaround is sufficient for you. You can also always right-click on the shortcut inside an open dialog, choose to open the target location, and proceed from there.
Thank you for getting back to me on this subject.
I’m not technical what so ever, which is why I use your software since it can be used without technical know how (thank you for creating it with an easy user interface). Your explanation sounds technical and after some reading up I think I understand what you mean.
As long as the workaround(s) you mentioned keep functioning I am just as happy using the software. Those already helped me a lot, I would have never thought of the workarounds on my own.
Hope you have a nice day.
You need to differentiate between a
a) Symbolic Directory Link (created with mklink /D)
and
b) Windows Shortcut File.lnk (created via the (File Explorer) GUI: Right-click → Create Shortcut)
So, how did you create the shortcuts to your folders?
I bet you did not use the command line but the GUI.
And if that is the case then you have created lnk files.
I would seriously consider to set the explorer options not to hide extensions of known file types.
I'm not sure if we speak about the same problem:
Since version v3.30c of Mp3tag, it is no longer possible to use shortcuts (.lnk) to open another directory within Mp3tag by double-clicking on the shortcut.
If you want to open a shortcut with Mp3tag v3.30c and newer you can: a) Right click directly on your shortcut (on the Desktop or in your Windows File Explorer) and choose Mp3tag to open the linked directory in Mp3tag.
or b) You can Drag & Drop the shortcut into Mp3tag
If you insist on opening your 'linked' folders inside Mp3tag, you will need to use the Windows command line to create 'Symbolic Directory Links' (with mklink /D) to your folder.
I think it would be very odd to open .link-file on the desktop with Mp3tag->Change or add directory because in chazz14's case it would be much easier to chose the directory d:\Music directly.
Anyway:
The folders Music, Documents and so on are special link-folders in Windows, which only exist as shell-folders, not as link-files.
To link such a folder to another place than the usual c:\users\username\Music it is advisable to use a windows-feature for this case: Right Mouse-click on Properties of the folder and changing the path to this folder.
