# Keeping track of which tags have changed since the last DVD backup
**URL:** https://community.mp3tag.de/t/keeping-track-of-which-tags-have-changed-since-the-last-dvd-backup/4562
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [March 3, 2007, 10:51pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/keeping-track-of-which-tags-have-changed-since-the-last-dvd-backup/4562 "2007-03-03T22:51:58Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@randym](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/randym)
#### Post date: [March 3, 2007, 10:51pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/keeping-track-of-which-tags-have-changed-since-the-last-dvd-backup/4562/1 "2007-03-03T22:51:58Z")
I wish to create a flac tag giving the date that a music file was backed up to DVD so that I can later determine whether I have modified the file’s tags since it was last archived. Suppose I call this tag ARCHIVE\_DATE. My hope is to create a column in the right-hand side of the MP3Tag interface window that indicates whether ARCHIVE\_DATE is less than or greater than the file modification date. My first attempt didn’t work. I simply created a flac tag and entered a date in the format mm/dd/yy 0:00:00 PM, and defined a report column as “$if(%ARCHIVE\_DATE%\>%\_file\_mod\_datetime%,x,)” This statement creates an “x” in the column no matter if the inequality is \< or \>. I suspect ARCHIVE\_DATE must be defined as numeric in some way (like YEAR and TRACK).
As you can surmise, I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m simply mimicking examples. (A forum posting enabled me to create a column indicating whether a track has lyrics [$if(%lyrics%,x,) does the trick] and the definition of the Modifed column that is part of the standard MP3Tag configuration is %\_file\_mod\_datetime%.
Incidentally, is %\_file\_mod\_datetime% written into the file like the flac tags?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Randy
---
### Author:  [@Sebastian\_Mares](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Sebastian_Mares)
#### Post date: [March 4, 2007, 6:19am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/keeping-track-of-which-tags-have-changed-since-the-last-dvd-backup/4562/2 "2007-03-04T06:19:35Z")
I don't think this is going to be easy to do because Mp3tag does not support date compare. You would have to convert the time to something like an unix timestamp. Maybe Florian can implement such a function that accepts the parameters day, month, year, hour, minute, second. With such a function, you can then use $ifgreater().
---
### Author:  [@aladoro](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/aladoro)
#### Post date: [March 4, 2007, 7:40am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/keeping-track-of-which-tags-have-changed-since-the-last-dvd-backup/4562/3 "2007-03-04T07:40:26Z")
> I wish to create a flac tag giving the date that a music file was backed up to DVD
> so that I can later determine whether I have modified the file’s tags since it was last archived
> sorry, I may be off topic: but why the hell not using a simple backup program relying on the archive bit set of the files???
(if I have a hammer only everything looks like a nail 🙂
---
### Author:  [@system](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/system)
#### Post date: [February 9, 2026, 12:20pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/keeping-track-of-which-tags-have-changed-since-the-last-dvd-backup/4562/4 "2026-02-09T12:20:11Z")