# Renaming from Tags may cause problems on network storage
**URL:** https://community.mp3tag.de/t/renaming-from-tags-may-cause-problems-on-network-storage/68054
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [April 1, 2025, 9:10pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/renaming-from-tags-may-cause-problems-on-network-storage/68054 "2025-04-01T21:10:21Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@grimace66](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/grimace66)
#### Post date: [April 1, 2025, 9:10pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/renaming-from-tags-may-cause-problems-on-network-storage/68054/1 "2025-04-01T21:10:21Z")
When renaming files from the tags I've noticed that it ends up including characters that a that are unfriendly\Illegal when trying to import into programs. is there something I am doing wrong settings wise? Is there a way to prevent this from happening?
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### Author:  [@LyricsLover](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/LyricsLover)
#### Post date: [April 1, 2025, 9:33pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/renaming-from-tags-may-cause-problems-on-network-storage/68054/2 "2025-04-01T21:33:10Z")
In your tags all characters are allowed.
But your operating system (and especially your file system) has some limitations.
> **[Naming Files, Paths, and Namespaces - Win32 apps](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/fileio/naming-a-file#naming-conventions)**
>
> The file systems supported by Windows use the concept of files and directories to access data stored on a disk or device.
You could [have a look](https://docs.mp3tag.de/scripting/#string-functions) at the command `$validate` to replace such invalid characters.
If you show us your used format string, we can help you to apply this command.
But if only your 3rd party programs have a problem with "unfriendly" characters, you need to check what characters exactly cause a problem.
Then you could `$replace` specific "unfriendly" characters with other ones.
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### Author:  [@grimace66](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/grimace66)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2025, 2:54am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/renaming-from-tags-may-cause-problems-on-network-storage/68054/3 "2025-04-02T02:54:26Z")
Thank you so much for the insight!
this is what I use mostly
%albumartist% - %album% - $num(%discnumber%,2) - $num(%track%,2) - %title%
%albumartist% - %album% - $num(%track%,2) - %title%
%album% - $num(%discnumber%,2) - $num(%track%,2) - %artist% - %title%
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### Author:  [@poster](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/poster)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2025, 5:26am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/renaming-from-tags-may-cause-problems-on-network-storage/68054/4 "2025-04-02T05:26:45Z")
If you use these format strings to rename filenanes, illegal characters for the file system are simply dropped, i.e a question mark in the title won't appear in the filename.
You can control this to a certain extent, so that certain invalid characters in the title, album, etc. are not simply dropped but replaced with others of your choosing. This is done with the $validate() or $replace() functions.
Example:
Your format string for the filename is
`%albumartist% - %album% - $num(%track%,2) - %title%`
and if the tag contents contain, for example, a double quote you could use
`$replace(%albumartist% - %album% - $num(%track%,2) - %title%,",')`
to replace this character with a single quote.
Check out the syntax for $validate() and $replace() in the help.
> **[Scripting Functions – Mp3tag Documentation](https://docs.mp3tag.de/scripting/#string-functions)**
>
> Documentation on Mp3tag's scripting functions. Mp3tag is the universal Tag Editor.
However, what you mean by "unfriendly/illegal" for importing into other programs isn't clear from your explanations so far. You should explain which programs you're talking about and what "importing" means in this context.
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### Author:  [@grimace66](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/grimace66)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2025, 6:27pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/renaming-from-tags-may-cause-problems-on-network-storage/68054/5 "2025-04-02T18:27:39Z")
Musicbrainz & Lidarr are the programs, and they are stored on NFS Share and are used by Linux machines as well
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### Author:  [@LyricsLover](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/LyricsLover)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2025, 7:07pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/renaming-from-tags-may-cause-problems-on-network-storage/68054/6 "2025-04-02T19:07:45Z")
Which characters exactly are "unfriendly" or illegal for MusicBrainz, Lidarr or NFS?
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### Author:  [@grimace66](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/grimace66)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2025, 7:22pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/renaming-from-tags-may-cause-problems-on-network-storage/68054/7 "2025-04-02T19:22:56Z")
From a quick search
You generally cannot use characters outside of the standard ASCII range (0-127) for filenames, you should avoid characters like those in the range 128-255, and reserved characters like `<`, `>`, `:`, `"`, `/`, `\`, `|`, `?`, ''', '@', and `*`.
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### Author:  [@LyricsLover](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/LyricsLover)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2025, 7:27pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/renaming-from-tags-may-cause-problems-on-network-storage/68054/8 "2025-04-02T19:27:38Z")
If you show us some [screenshots](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/hints-for-asking-support-requests/56190#use-screenshots-to-exemplify-the-issue-2) of your situation and what exactly you want to change, we can maybe help you better.
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### Author:  [@grimace66](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/grimace66)
#### Post date: [April 4, 2025, 7:17pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/renaming-from-tags-may-cause-problems-on-network-storage/68054/9 "2025-04-04T19:17:10Z")
This is the results that I am getting when using the tags to create the file names.
The name of the album is: Degüello
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### Author:  [@LyricsLover](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/LyricsLover)
#### Post date: [April 4, 2025, 8:10pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/renaming-from-tags-may-cause-problems-on-network-storage/68054/10 "2025-04-04T20:10:46Z")
Now please show us a screenshot from the song #1 if you press Alt + T on it.
Then we can see how the ALBUM field is filled.
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### Author:  [@grimace66](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/grimace66)
#### Post date: [April 4, 2025, 8:13pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/renaming-from-tags-may-cause-problems-on-network-storage/68054/11 "2025-04-04T20:13:20Z")
Is that what you are looking for?
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### Author:  [@LyricsLover](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/LyricsLover)
#### Post date: [April 4, 2025, 8:19pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/renaming-from-tags-may-cause-problems-on-network-storage/68054/12 "2025-04-04T20:19:14Z")
Unfortunately not, no.
Your screenshot above ist from another software, but not from Mp3tag.
Please load the song #1 into Mp3tag.
Press Alt + T
Take a screenshot and post it in your answer.
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### Author:  [@grimace66](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/grimace66)
#### Post date: [April 4, 2025, 8:22pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/renaming-from-tags-may-cause-problems-on-network-storage/68054/13 "2025-04-04T20:22:32Z")
My apologies for the mistake, This is from MP3Tag
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### Author:  [@LyricsLover](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/LyricsLover)
#### Post date: [April 4, 2025, 10:00pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/renaming-from-tags-may-cause-problems-on-network-storage/68054/14 "2025-04-04T22:00:23Z")
As you can see the content of ALBUM in Mp3tag is
`Degüello`
The strange thing is now that in Mp3tag you can see your filename as
the same as in the properties of a still unknown software:
but not as in
So where exactly do you see this `ü` characters in Degüello?
In which software do you have renamed your ALBUM content Deg **ü** ello into your current filename with Deg **u** ello?
If you rename your first track from the ZZ Top Album in Mp3tag with Convert Tag -\> Filename and the Format string:
`%ARTIST% - %ALBUM% - %TRACK% - %TITLE%`
what do you get as result?
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### Author:  [@grimace66](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/grimace66)
#### Post date: [April 5, 2025, 1:41am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/renaming-from-tags-may-cause-problems-on-network-storage/68054/15 "2025-04-05T01:41:12Z")
I manually changed the incorrect characters with "u" because just trying to clean up my collection as quickly as possible. what came out was exactly you see in the screenshot.
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### Author:  [@LyricsLover](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/LyricsLover)
#### Post date: [April 5, 2025, 8:38am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/renaming-from-tags-may-cause-problems-on-network-storage/68054/16 "2025-04-05T08:38:28Z")
If the Mp3tag Convert Tag -\> Filename function really writes
`Deguello` or `Degüello`
from you rexisting ALBUM content
`Degüello`
then I don't see how Mp3tag could automatically guess the correct values for your target file system.
The only way I see is to use the `$replace` scripting function and replace all "unfriendly" characters with "friendly" ones.
The Format string would be something like @poster already wrote in answer #4.
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### Author:  [@make-nz](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/make-nz)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2025, 4:45pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/renaming-from-tags-may-cause-problems-on-network-storage/68054/17 "2025-04-29T16:45:05Z")
> [@LyricsLover](#):
>
> as in
> 
>
> So where exactly do you see this `ü` characters in Degüello?
This is due to charset issues!
NFSv4 requires filenames in UTF-8 encoding, but your filenames were written by some Latin encoding, like ISO-8859-1 maybe?
Switch to SMB if possible, which has been my solution to this for ~15 years, for Linux use too!
Just do not share out the same folders/files as NFS & SMB!!
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### Author:  [@ohrenkino](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/ohrenkino)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2025, 4:57pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/renaming-from-tags-may-cause-problems-on-network-storage/68054/18 "2025-04-29T16:57:46Z")
The OP still has to reveal where the characters are shown in the garbled way.
On my Windows machine, the files look like this:
which I think is fine.
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### Author:  [@make-nz](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/make-nz)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2025, 5:13pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/renaming-from-tags-may-cause-problems-on-network-storage/68054/19 "2025-04-29T17:13:01Z")
Well I can show the issue from my own files
Things get very wild, because stuff just does not get listed one or the other way!
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### Author:  [@ohrenkino](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/ohrenkino)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2025, 5:17pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/renaming-from-tags-may-cause-problems-on-network-storage/68054/20 "2025-04-29T17:17:04Z")
Could you also tell us the origin of each screenshot?
The right one looks like Windows while the other one looks like an old DOS program.
[Next page](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/renaming-from-tags-may-cause-problems-on-network-storage/68054.md?page=2)