# Searching filenames with different notation

**URL:** <https://community.mp3tag.de/t/searching-filenames-with-different-notation/50834>\
**Category:** Support\
**Created:** [November 19, 2020, 2:02pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/searching-filenames-with-different-notation/50834 "2020-11-19T14:02:18Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Bear](https://community.mp3tag.de/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/ac8455/32.png) [@Bear](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Bear)\
**Post date:** [November 19, 2020, 2:02pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/searching-filenames-with-different-notation/50834/1 "2020-11-19T14:02:18Z")

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Hi Folks, a problem that I could not solve yet. I have file with names like "songtitle.mp3" and other ones with file names like "artist - songtitle.mp3". Most of my files are like "artist - songtitle.mp3" but there are still thousands of files written incorrectly as "songtitle.mp3". How can I find only those files, which are written as "songtitle.mp3", just to change the file names manually?

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**Author:** ![ohrenkino](https://community.mp3tag.de/user_avatar/community.mp3tag.de/ohrenkino/32/4843_2.png) [@ohrenkino](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/ohrenkino)\
**Post date:** [November 19, 2020, 4:09pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/searching-filenames-with-different-notation/50834/2 "2020-11-19T16:09:35Z")

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> [@Bear](#):
>
> artist - songtitle

Looks to me like the ones that you are looking for do not have the hyphen as part of the name, so perhaps this filter works:  
`NOT %_filename% HAS " - "`

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**Author:** ![poster](https://community.mp3tag.de/user_avatar/community.mp3tag.de/poster/32/4881_2.png) [@poster](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/poster)\
**Post date:** [November 19, 2020, 5:45pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/searching-filenames-with-different-notation/50834/3 "2020-11-19T17:45:51Z")

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I don't understand why you want to find them.  
Mp3Tag is a software to tag files with metadata.  
So do you have content in the tagfields TITLE and ARTIST?  
If so just buld new filenames with the converter Tag-\>Filename and the format string:  
%artist% - %title%

If one of your tagfields has no content just filter:  
%artist% MISSING  
or  
%title% MISSING

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**Author:** ![Bear](https://community.mp3tag.de/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/ac8455/32.png) [@Bear](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Bear)\
**Post date:** [November 20, 2020, 12:15am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/searching-filenames-with-different-notation/50834/4 "2020-11-20T00:15:00Z")

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Works fine, thanks. Vielen Dank!

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**Author:** ![Bear](https://community.mp3tag.de/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/ac8455/32.png) [@Bear](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Bear)\
**Post date:** [November 20, 2020, 12:18am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/searching-filenames-with-different-notation/50834/5 "2020-11-20T00:18:24Z")

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Have tried your propsal, works well. Thanks.

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**Author:** ![system](https://community.mp3tag.de/uploads/default/original/2X/c/ce7035d426cb755a7916793326d23b465222a407.png) [@system](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/system)\
**Post date:** [February 9, 2026, 12:28pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/searching-filenames-with-different-notation/50834/6 "2026-02-09T12:28:56Z")

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