Idiot Guide to batch renaming Title

Support
1

Hi,

I use ITunes with Windows Vista and often want to batch rename the "Name" field (ie rename several at a time). Some of the names just show track numbers and I'd like to add my own text followed or preceded by the track number. Or if I can't add my own text then I'd like to use Artist/Album name etc.

Eg rename "Track #" to "Joe Bloggs, Best of Joe Bloggs, Track #"

I've downloaded MP3tag and have read the instructions plus quite a lot of posts in the forum but can't understand how to do this (I am not a programmer). I see that the "Name" field in ITunes = "Title" in MP3tag. I highlighted the tracks I wanted to change but couldn't see what to do next.

Could someone kindly (and clearly) explain please?
Thanks very much.

2

Simply enter the new string - either in the tag panel for more than one track (if the data is the same for these tracks - do not forget to save the changes) or individually if they differ by clicking into the respective fields.
I am afraid that if you do not understand the forum entries, I will not be able to help you as this is the forum. And most entries are pretty straight forward and cannot get any clearer.

3

I had the same question and stumbled onto the right solution. You'd think it would be such a common use that it would be a dedicated action in the program & explicitly discussed in the help or forums. But it isn't.

The best way to answer the question is to describe what I did.

I have an audiobook, The Greatest Show on Earth, that consists of 14 audio files, all named like "1 of 14.mp3". The %Album% tag was correctly populated as "The Greatest Show on Earth" and the %Track% tags were correctly numbered. But the title tags were all of format "%track% of 14". I wanted each title to be of the format:

"%album%-%track%"

But there was no obvious way to automatically rename each Title using the value of other tags. MP3Tag's ACTION menu must be used:

Select all the tracks in the track listing pane.

Select Actions->Actions menu item. This opens the Action Groups dialog box.

Click on the "Star" icon to create a new action group. Enter a name for the Action Group; I used "Rename Title". This opens the Actions dialog box.

Click on the "Star" icon to create a new action.

Select "Format value" as the action type. Click OK.

This opens a dialog in which to select a target tag (%title%) and specify source tags to define. Oddly, in MP3Tag 2.48, TITLE is not one of the options in the drop list. TITLESORT is, but this IS NOT the tag you want. Fortunately, you can enter TITLE as the target tag manually (it will try to autocomplete TITLE as TITLESORT; hit the delete key to override).

In the next field, "Format String", enter:

%album%-%track%

Click OK. This brings you back to the Actions dialog.

Click OK. This brings you back to the Action Groups dialog.

Check the action group that you just created; in my case, it was Rename Title.

Click OK.

Viola. The %title% tags have been automatically renamed.

Hope this helps future users with the same question.

Rob