# Confused about Tools | Options | Tags | Mpeg
**URL:** https://community.mp3tag.de/t/confused-about-tools-options-tags-mpeg/12661
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [November 5, 2011, 9:11pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/confused-about-tools-options-tags-mpeg/12661 "2011-11-05T21:11:39Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@rogerdahl](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/rogerdahl)
#### Post date: [November 5, 2011, 9:11pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/confused-about-tools-options-tags-mpeg/12661/1 "2011-11-05T21:11:39Z")
I have an old MP3 player that is picky about which tags it will accept.
So I attempted to remove the ID3v2 tags from a song that was listed as containing "ID3v2.4 (ID3v1 ID3v2.4)". I went to Tools | Options | Tags | Mpeg and set:
```
Read:
X ID3v1
X ID3v2
APE
Write:
X ID3v1
ID3v2
APEv2
Remove:
X ID3v1
X ID3v2
X APEv2
```
I then selected the song, right clicked it, and selected Save tag. But this didn't remove the ID3v2 tag. In fact, the tag description didn't change at all. Not even after refreshing the view with F5. Shouldn't leaving ID3v2 unchecked in the Write section cause ID3v2 tags not to be written when saving the tags?
Any help much appreciated.
---
### Author:  [@dano](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/dano)
#### Post date: [November 5, 2011, 11:00pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/confused-about-tools-options-tags-mpeg/12661/2 "2011-11-05T23:00:51Z")
To remove a complete tag format you must use the "Remove tag" command.
It will remove all the tag formats selected at "Remove"
So you should change your settings to
Remove:
[] ID3v1
[x] ID3v2
[] APEv2
---
### Author:  [@JJ\_Johnson](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/JJ_Johnson)
#### Post date: [November 5, 2011, 11:07pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/confused-about-tools-options-tags-mpeg/12661/3 "2011-11-05T23:07:09Z")
Experiment with this on some test files first, but I think you have two basic ways of accomplishing this:
1. Keep the settings you show above, highlight your files, then use Ctrl-X (cut), then Ctrl-V (paste). This will first remove \*all\* tags from the files, then paste them back from the clipboard, writing only ID3v1 tags.
2. The reason you want to do a 'save' first is to copy any data from ID3v2 to ID3v1 tags for any files without an ID3v1 tag. If your files already have ID3v1 tags, then it's unnecessary.
I'm not sure if there are any other subtle differences, but I prefer the second method, as it doesn't leave your files with no tags at any point. When you remove all the tags you have to hope that the data was copied correctly to the clipboard and that it will be pasted back without any errors.
---
### Author:  [@rogerdahl](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/rogerdahl)
#### Post date: [November 6, 2011, 12:54am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/confused-about-tools-options-tags-mpeg/12661/4 "2011-11-06T00:54:19Z")
Awesome!
Thank you for the great answers. They solved my issue.
So, the main problem was that I did not understand that the settings under Tools | Options | Tags | Mpeg apply to different types of operations. I think it would be great if the docs under /Mp3tag/help/options\_id3.html would be updated to accommodate morons like myself. My suggestion would be to add some more text in each section (Read, Write and Remove) describing to which operations (Such as Cut / Paste / Remove), the settings in each section apply.
Also, and I realize that this would trip up everyone that are already familiar with this excellent app, I think that Save tag should be modified, or have an option added, to be able to implicitly remove tags. The reasoning is that I think that in general, people want their music collection to have uniform tags. So having Save tag automatically create and remove tags in such a way that the end result is the same for each song regardless of which tags were present before, would be a good thing.
@JJ Johnson, am I understanding correctly that, like me, you were not aware of the Edit | Remove command and its relationship with the Tags | Mpeg | Remove settings? Though, even with Edit | Remove available, I think your procedure #2 is still required so that information in the tags is not lost in the case of the user wanting ID3v1 tags, the song having only ID3v2 tags and Tags | Mpeg | Remove having been configured to remove ID3v2.
Thanks again.
---
### Author:  [@system](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/system)
#### Post date: [February 9, 2026, 12:23pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/confused-about-tools-options-tags-mpeg/12661/5 "2026-02-09T12:23:25Z")