# Short Filenames?
**URL:** https://community.mp3tag.de/t/short-filenames/13437
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [May 16, 2012, 8:49pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/short-filenames/13437 "2012-05-16T20:49:37Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Ravork](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Ravork)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2012, 8:49pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/short-filenames/13437/1 "2012-05-16T20:49:37Z")
I'm using MP3Tag for my flash drive to organize my music in a convient way for my car stereo. It reads the file names but it only reads up to 8 characters, anything past that and it gets confused and won't organize them correctly. I believe it only works with the old 8.3 format. I'm currently using the Tag - Filename for this and the following is a sample of my output.
E:\%artist%\%album%%track%
Is there a way I could limit the number of characters on the album section to 6 characters. That would be perfect for the 8.3 format.
AAAAAA##.mp3
This would save a LOT of time.
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### Author:  [@JJ\_Johnson](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/JJ_Johnson)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2012, 8:59pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/short-filenames/13437/2 "2012-05-16T20:59:00Z")
You can use the $left() function to get the first n characters of a string.
$left(x, n)
[https://docs.mp3tag.de/scripting/#string-functions](https://docs.mp3tag.de/scripting/#string-functions)
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### Author:  [@Ravork](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Ravork)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2012, 9:26pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/short-filenames/13437/3 "2012-05-16T21:26:01Z")
Aww I see sorta like this...
E:\%artist$left(%album%,6)%track%
Perfect. Thanks for the help.
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### Author:  [@system](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/system)
#### Post date: [February 9, 2026, 12:23pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/short-filenames/13437/4 "2026-02-09T12:23:50Z")