# How to leave existing tag values?
**URL:** https://community.mp3tag.de/t/how-to-leave-existing-tag-values/7240
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [September 26, 2008, 3:24am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/how-to-leave-existing-tag-values/7240 "2008-09-26T03:24:20Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@M.A.X](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/M.A.X)
#### Post date: [September 26, 2008, 3:24am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/how-to-leave-existing-tag-values/7240/1 "2008-09-26T03:24:20Z")
Hi
I'm wondering if there is any way to 'leave alone' any existing tag values while processing tags.
Here is my scenario:
- I have songs where the title tag is empy
- I also have songs where the title tag has values
- I want to update my tags from the filenames, specifically I go Convert \> Filename - Tag \> Format String: %artist% - %title%
- The above convert will update all the Artist and Title tag values from the files, but it will ALSO over-write any existing tag values with the filename values - I don't want it to do that, I want it to only update (fill in) the empty Artist and Title tag fields, but if the fields already have values, I want those to be left alone (not over-writen).
Is there any way to do this?
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### Author:  [@Florian](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Florian)
#### Post date: [September 26, 2008, 7:45am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/how-to-leave-existing-tag-values/7240/2 "2008-09-26T07:45:15Z")
No, just sort the files in Mp3tag's file view by clicking on the column headers to identify files with the missing information.
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### Author:  [@system](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/system)
#### Post date: [February 9, 2026, 12:21pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/how-to-leave-existing-tag-values/7240/3 "2026-02-09T12:21:07Z")