# Shortening title tags and other questions?
**URL:** https://community.mp3tag.de/t/shortening-title-tags-and-other-questions/8729
**Category:** General Discussion
**Created:** [August 6, 2009, 9:07am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/shortening-title-tags-and-other-questions/8729 "2009-08-06T09:07:44Z")
**Posts on this page:** 7
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@mellemel](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/mellemel)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2009, 9:07am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/shortening-title-tags-and-other-questions/8729/1 "2009-08-06T09:07:44Z")
:Issue number 1:
Sorry I did a search and really didn't find much. The tips I did see I didn't understand. This is a situation I run into often...say I have Titles that looks like this:
08 - Rescue Me - A Taste Of Honey
09 - That's The Joint/Shake Your Rump - Funky 4+1/Beastie Boys
10 - James Brown Interview - Skratch Bastid
and so on...I like to remove the numbers from the Title so I'd be left with
Rescue Me - A Taste Of Honey
That's The Joint/Shake Your Rump - Funky 4+1/Beastie Boys
James Brown Interview - Skratch Bastid
I've been manually removing numbers myself because I've seen no other way of automating this process. Not much fun if there are 30 titles to go through. It gets quite involved and repetitive! That seems wrong and more effort than need be. So there's got to be a way to remove those 5 beginning spaces in the Title so the title begins with the song name? How?
* * *
:Issue number 2:
If the Title had the artist name, for example, and the artist name was already tagged...is there a way to get MP3tag to remove just the artist name from the Title? So many times I've seen names repeated for no good reason and it sucks
* * *
:Issue number 3:
Is there a way, within Mp3tag to tell if the mp3 has a both ID3v1 AND ID3v2 tags and to then remove all ID3v1 tags?
Thank you...wonderful product this is...
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### Author:  [@newser](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/newser)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2009, 10:36am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/shortening-title-tags-and-other-questions/8729/2 "2009-08-06T10:36:04Z")
for I: Do you want to remove the tracknumber from the filename or from the tag?
for II: same question. And please give us an example.
for III: enable writing only for ID3v2 and removing only for ID3v1 in the mp3tag-options.
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### Author:  [@mellemel](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/mellemel)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2009, 11:03pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/shortening-title-tags-and-other-questions/8729/3 "2009-08-06T23:03:29Z")
Well I thought I was pretty clear in my descriptions and examples but oh well...I know it can be confusing. I did try to use the terminology used in MP3tag 🙂
for I:
Yes I want to remove numbers from the tag, sometimes at the start of the TITLE TAG, and sometimes they're after an artist name or something like. After that's done I then usually apply the title tag to filename, and rename the files, so everything has a uniform convention.
Okay, let's say the artist is Britney Spears and the album is called Circus (not that I would listen to such an album hahaha)
Again, the title tags might read like:
1. Womanizer
2. Circus
3. Out From Under
I want the TITLE TAGs to read like:
Womanizer
Circus
Out From Under
Because I've already used MP3tag's Autonumbering wizard, I don't need the Title tag to have the numbers as well. Makes sense right?
* * *
For II:
I guess the question is basically the same just a name instead of a number.
How do I change TITLES that read like:
Britney Spears\_Womanizer
Britney Spears\_Circus
Britney Spears\_Out From Under
to read like:
Womanizer
Circus
Out From Under
without having to do it all manually?
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
Matter of fact how would you change:
Britney Spears\_1. Womanizer
Britney Spears\_2. Circus
Britney Spears\_13. Out From Under
to:
Womanizer
Circus
Out From Under
I know this last example is goofy but I've seen some pretty silly way people have tagged things. 🙂
There you go...unless I take screen caps I don't know how else I can be clearer ahaha
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### Author:  [@newser](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/newser)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2009, 11:21pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/shortening-title-tags-and-other-questions/8729/4 "2009-08-06T23:21:32Z")
For I:
_Name of action group:_ **remove tracknumber**
_Action type:_ **Replace with regular expression**
_Field:_ **TITLE**
_Regular expression:_ **(\d\*.) (.\*)**
_Replace matches with:_ **$2**
[] case-sensitive comparison
For II:
_Name of action group:_ **remove artist**
_Action type:_ **Replace with regular expression**
_Field:_ **TITLE**
_Regular expression:_ **(._)\_(._)**
_Replace matches with:_ **$2**
[] case-sensitive comparison
For III:
_Name of action group:_ **remove artist & track**
_Action type:_ **Replace with regular expression**
_Field:_ **TITLE**
_Regular expression:_ **(._.) (._)**
_Replace matches with:_ **$2**
[] case-sensitive comparison
or one for all:
_Name of action group:_ **remove track &/or artist**
_Action type:_ **Replace with regular expression**
_Field:_ **TITLE**
_Regular expression:_ **(._. |\d_. |._\_)(._)**
_Replace matches with:_ **$2**
[] case-sensitive comparison
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### Author:  [@mellemel](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/mellemel)
#### Post date: [August 10, 2009, 8:24pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/shortening-title-tags-and-other-questions/8729/5 "2009-08-10T20:24:28Z")
Thank you for that. I've never done anything that involved so I guess I have to figure out how now. :stuck\_out\_tongue: And I just reformatted my drive and noticed the current build of MP3tag v2.43 is a little different than v2.4. Which leads me to this issue....
I just tried tagging an album and the format I like for filenames is:
%track% %artist% - %title%
so you end up with:
01. artist - songname
Let's say there's 12 songs, I like filenames to be numbered like this:
01. artist - songname
-etc...
08. artist - songname
10. artist - songname
In the TAG I like numbers to be 01/10...03/10 and so on.
geez it get's confusing trying to explain something so simple!   
SOOOO...basically when I would apply TAG - FILENAME v.2.40 and prior I'd end up with
08. artist - songname
Now with v. 2.43 I end up with
0810. artist - songname \<---WHY??? How do I change that? to 08. artist - songname?
WOW why is it so hard to explain these things??? haha
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### Author:  [@newser](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/newser)
#### Post date: [August 10, 2009, 8:31pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/shortening-title-tags-and-other-questions/8729/6 "2009-08-10T20:31:01Z")
Try
$num(%track%,2) %artist% - %title%
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### Author:  [@mellemel](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/mellemel)
#### Post date: [August 10, 2009, 11:04pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/shortening-title-tags-and-other-questions/8729/7 "2009-08-10T23:04:24Z")
THANK YOU!!!