# Remove first 'n' characters from a string?
**URL:** https://community.mp3tag.de/t/remove-first-n-characters-from-a-string/16153
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [September 18, 2014, 1:13am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/remove-first-n-characters-from-a-string/16153 "2014-09-18T01:13:13Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Cryptrix](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Cryptrix)
#### Post date: [September 18, 2014, 1:13am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/remove-first-n-characters-from-a-string/16153/1 "2014-09-18T01:13:13Z")
For a very large label collection I have, all of the album names are something like 'ANJ003 - blahblahblah' or 'ANJCD123 - something longer than blah blah'. I am having trouble finding a way to simply remove the front code and the '-' leaving only the end portion. I attempted to use the Filename - Filename' technique but I can't find a consistant way to mark each word in the string, since all of the different files have different length names. Is there a command that will simple remove, for example, the first 7 characters from a string? There must be but I can't find it. Or is there another way that somebody knows how I could accomplish this?
Thanks for the help!
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### Author:  [@ohrenkino](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/ohrenkino)
#### Post date: [September 18, 2014, 3:53am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/remove-first-n-characters-from-a-string/16153/2 "2014-09-18T03:53:39Z")
> [@Cryptrix](#):
>
> For a very large label collection I have, all of the album names are something like 'ANJ003 - blahblahblah' or 'ANJCD123 - something longer than blah blah'. I am having trouble finding a way to simply remove the front code and the '-' leaving only the end portion. I attempted to use the Filename - Filename' technique ...
>
> Thanks for the help!
Are we talking about the field ALBUM or the \_FILENAME?
Anyway: you can use an action of the type "Import tag field (Guess value)" - provided there is only one hyphen in the string.
For the action:
Enter the field name.
Enter as mask: %dummy% - %fieldname%
This should fill the field "DUMMY" with the part in front of the hyphen - and as DUMMY is more or less the dump this is just like deleting this part - and assign the rest to the field again.
Other alternatives would be a "Replace with regular expression" and the following:
Search: .\* - (.\*)
Replace: $1
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### Author:  [@system](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/system)
#### Post date: [February 9, 2026, 12:25pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/remove-first-n-characters-from-a-string/16153/3 "2026-02-09T12:25:16Z")