# How to auto render dates to year only?
**URL:** https://community.mp3tag.de/t/how-to-auto-render-dates-to-year-only/70993
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [April 4, 2026, 6:16am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/how-to-auto-render-dates-to-year-only/70993 "2026-04-04T06:16:38Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@charibancho](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/charibancho)
#### Post date: [April 4, 2026, 6:16am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/how-to-auto-render-dates-to-year-only/70993/1 "2026-04-04T06:16:38Z")
I had some great help creating a great action to remove all ‘feat/featuring’ etc text from tags and filenames a while back [here](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/how-to-remove-featuring-xxxxxx-from-artist-field/15157/8).
My final boss issue (for now) is an action to change release date fields like this: 2026\42026-01-16 to become simply the year, 2026.
I’ve tried re-engineering the ‘featuring’ answer but I’m lost. What follows the year is sometimes // or commas etc. I just need a way to keep the first 4 digits of whatever’s in the field.
Thank you!
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### Author:  [@ohrenkino](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/ohrenkino)
#### Post date: [April 4, 2026, 6:56am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/how-to-auto-render-dates-to-year-only/70993/2 "2026-04-04T06:56:11Z")
See e.g. here:
> [@Removing duplication and symbols from titles,artist & year](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/removing-duplication-and-symbols-from-titles-artist-year/61300):
>
> Currently I have a bunch of music where the titles and artists show up as "ABC\\ABC" whereas the year showup as "2021\\2021-01-21". Essentially what I was trying to remove for the titles and artists is the "\\ABC" whereas for the year I want to remove "2021\\". I am unable to figure out how to do this. Any help is very much appreciated smiley
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### Author:  [@charibancho](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/charibancho)
#### Post date: [April 4, 2026, 8:15am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/how-to-auto-render-dates-to-year-only/70993/3 "2026-04-04T08:15:54Z")
Perfect pointer, thanks, got it done!
I still had a niggling 2026-01-31 but used:
Field: `%year%`
1. Find: `^(\d{4})-\d{2}-\d{2}$`
2. Replace: `$1`
and all clean!
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### Author:  [@ohrenkino](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/ohrenkino)
#### Post date: [April 4, 2026, 8:19am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/how-to-auto-render-dates-to-year-only/70993/4 "2026-04-04T08:19:39Z")
You could also try "Format value" or Convert\>Tag-Tag for YEAR
Format string: `$num(%year%,1)`
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### Author:  [@system](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/system)
#### Post date: [April 11, 2026, 8:20am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/how-to-auto-render-dates-to-year-only/70993/5 "2026-04-11T08:20:26Z")
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