# How to Auto Tag (DATE ONLY)?
**URL:** https://community.mp3tag.de/t/how-to-auto-tag-date-only/45556
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [May 28, 2019, 11:42am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/how-to-auto-tag-date-only/45556 "2019-05-28T11:42:11Z")
**Posts on this page:** 8
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Woodssi](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Woodssi)
#### Post date: [May 28, 2019, 11:42am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/how-to-auto-tag-date-only/45556/1 "2019-05-28T11:42:11Z")
Hi, new User here (so I will apologise, as I'm sure this will have been raised on here somewhere before).
Have used to fill in all Artist & Track details (mostly manually, as didn't realise I could do automatically). Don't abuse me, it's an age thing!! 😄
Before I lose another month of my life, can someone tell me how (a tutorial or some such) to show me the steps to automatically retrieve and update the YEAR field only?
The reason is, that when I open files in MusicBee, some have YEAR only (which is what is shown in my MP3Tag field), but others have 1/1/\* showing...
---
### Author:  [@ohrenkino](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/ohrenkino)
#### Post date: [May 28, 2019, 12:03pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/how-to-auto-tag-date-only/45556/2 "2019-05-28T12:03:49Z")
Apart from the problem that artist and title hardly define the release year of a track ...
see e.g. here:
> [@Have artist and title - need year](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/have-artist-and-title-need-year/11779):
>
> Hi, I've been using mp3tag to manually edit my mp3s with great success. I have a few thousand songs (many actually), with correct artist and title tags only, but no year tag. Now I want to use "tag sources" to get only the year tag (ideally the fist year of release of any particular song), and possibly (but not necessarily) the genre tag. First I tried freedb, but for any given track, the results were always wrong, it never got the song right. So I then tried musicbrainz, which pops up a box "Se…
There is no DATE field - there is the most common field YEAR and sometimes RELEASETIME.
See the help on a list of supported fields:
> **[Tag Field Mappings – Mp3tag Documentation](https://docs.mp3tag.de/mapping/)**
>
> Overview of all available tag fields, their names in Mp3tag, and how they are mapped to the internal structures of the different tag formats. Mp3tag is the universal Tag Editor.
---
### Author:  [@Woodssi](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Woodssi)
#### Post date: [May 28, 2019, 12:12pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/how-to-auto-tag-date-only/45556/3 "2019-05-28T12:12:39Z")
Thank you for very quick response.
So, if I understand, I am looking to auto-retrieve YEAR then?
How can I do this?
---
### Author:  [@ohrenkino](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/ohrenkino)
#### Post date: [May 28, 2019, 12:17pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/how-to-auto-tag-date-only/45556/4 "2019-05-28T12:17:20Z")
> [@Woodssi](#):
>
> So, if I understand, I am looking to auto-retrieve YEAR then?
> How..?
The already linked thread shows some proposals.
Please note that unless you have several files that belong to an album, you have to tag each file individually and call the web source separately for each file.
---
### Author:  [@Woodssi](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Woodssi)
#### Post date: [May 28, 2019, 12:18pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/how-to-auto-tag-date-only/45556/5 "2019-05-28T12:18:53Z")
Ahh, I see.
So, would be useful for Albums, but time-consuming for Singles.
I appreciate your assistance.
---
### Author:  [@ohrenkino](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/ohrenkino)
#### Post date: [May 28, 2019, 12:20pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/how-to-auto-tag-date-only/45556/6 "2019-05-28T12:20:43Z")
> [@Woodssi](#):
>
> time-consuming for Singles
Exactly. That's how it is.
---
### Author:  [@rhoneyman](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/rhoneyman)
#### Post date: [September 6, 2019, 7:24pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/how-to-auto-tag-date-only/45556/7 "2019-09-06T19:24:17Z")
Not sure this helps, but...
I organize all my files into folders by composer/composition with the individual files for all the movements or scenes (opera) in numerical order. If I need to make a mass update to all the files in a folder, I open the folder, highlight all the tracks (ctrl-a), and type in the universal value in, say, the date box in the left bar. I can then save that for that folder.
---
### Author:  [@system](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/system)
#### Post date: [February 9, 2026, 12:28pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/how-to-auto-tag-date-only/45556/8 "2026-02-09T12:28:06Z")