# What happened to Options \>Actions?
**URL:** https://community.mp3tag.de/t/what-happened-to-options-actions/5855
**Category:** General Discussion
**Created:** [December 6, 2007, 9:03pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/what-happened-to-options-actions/5855 "2007-12-06T21:03:17Z")
**Posts on this page:** 16
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@JJ\_Johnson](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/JJ_Johnson)
#### Post date: [December 6, 2007, 9:03pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/what-happened-to-options-actions/5855/1 "2007-12-06T21:03:17Z")
Until recently, wasn't the Action Groups panel modifiable from the Options dialogue?
One thing that you can no longer do is change the checkmarks in the Action Groups panel without actually applying the changes to one or more files. That's a problem.
Say you apply an Action group that doesn't get used very often (for instance: "Remove All Fields") to the files you're working on. Now you want to clear that checkbox so that next time you don't accidentally apply it. You can't do that any more.
Or you have a standard set of actions that you normally use. You go in and clear them all, select some other non-standard Actions and apply them. Now you want to reset the checkboxes to the standard set. But you can't do that any more.
An alternative that would address this checkbox problem would be to save the checkboxe states, even if "Cancel" is pressed in the Action Groups panel. I'm not sure that would be desirable for everyone, though.
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### Author:  [@DetlevD](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/DetlevD)
#### Post date: [December 7, 2007, 4:11am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/what-happened-to-options-actions/5855/2 "2007-12-07T04:11:01Z")
> [@JJ Johnson](#):
>
> ... An alternative that would address this checkbox problem would be to save the checkboxe states, even if "Cancel" is pressed in the Action Groups panel. I'm not sure that would be desirable for everyone, though.
Yes, and this would lead us further on to improved worklow functionality when we are able to use switchable (pre)sets of actiongroups! This needs somewhat of an history inifile memory in the background.
DD.20071207.0610.CET
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### Author:  [@chrisjj](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/chrisjj)
#### Post date: [December 8, 2007, 12:24am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/what-happened-to-options-actions/5855/3 "2007-12-08T00:24:43Z")
> One thing that you can no longer do is change the checkmarks in the Action Groups panel without
> actually applying the changes to one or more files. That's a problem.
Agreed, except there is a workaround - create a null action group and check only it.
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### Author:  [@JJ\_Johnson](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/JJ_Johnson)
#### Post date: [December 8, 2007, 7:16pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/what-happened-to-options-actions/5855/4 "2007-12-08T19:16:30Z")
Thanks for the tip, but I'm afraid I don't see how that works around the problem. What I'm trying to do is get back to having a particular set of Actions checked when I exit the program. One fairly inconvenient workaround would be to apply the Action groups to a dummy audio file in order to save the desired checkbox states.
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### Author:  [@chrisjj](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/chrisjj)
#### Post date: [December 9, 2007, 12:20pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/what-happened-to-options-actions/5855/5 "2007-12-09T12:20:11Z")
Whoops, you're right - I misread your problem report - sorry.
Creating and checking a null group is a workaround for a differen problem - that the dialog is not closable with no groups checked.
Indeed there seems no workaround for your problem. This problem exists only becuase the Close button doesn't do just what its says (AFAICS it does the same as Cancel), so Florian perhaps that's where the fix should be.
Regardless I agree that Options should have Actions. Also because this is the only way to compose action and groups when there are no files in the file list.
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### Author:  [@JJ\_Johnson](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/JJ_Johnson)
#### Post date: [December 14, 2007, 5:10am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/what-happened-to-options-actions/5855/6 "2007-12-14T05:10:02Z")
I just thought of an easy way this problem might be solved. Add an additional button to the Action dialog that would be used to save the checkbox states and close the window without executing the Actions.
[OK] [Save] [Cancel] [Help]
OK: Run the selected Action groups
Save: Save the checkbox states and close the window
Cancel: Close the window without saving changes to the checkbox states
Help: Help
Actually, this would be even better than the old method having to go through File\>Options, as it would be closer at hand through the Actions button in the toolbar.
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### Author:  [@DetlevD](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/DetlevD)
#### Post date: [December 14, 2007, 6:21am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/what-happened-to-options-actions/5855/7 "2007-12-14T06:21:19Z")
> [@JJ Johnson](#):
>
> ... Save: Save the checkbox states and close the window ...
"Saving with implied closing of the dialog" is not contiguous standard behavior on dialog driven systems.
In general "save" is implemented as a "Take Over" (german: Übernehmen).
To leave the action dialog without running an actiongroup then you have to "save" and "cancel" the dialog, this would be the correct semantic way to leave.
Alternatively you may set the title of the "save" button to "save settings and close" to let the user be informed what will be happen by pressing this button.
But the best way is to implement a meta stage above the current dialog view, as I described in my last post. A sort of management tool that can manage a list of sets of actiongroups - same like the lately integrated column view management - so that the user can select one set from a list of predefined sets of actionsgroups, understanding one set of actiongoups as a workflow process.
DD.20071214.0821.CET
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### Author:  [@JJ\_Johnson](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/JJ_Johnson)
#### Post date: [December 14, 2007, 6:39am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/what-happened-to-options-actions/5855/8 "2007-12-14T06:39:43Z")
> [@DetlevD](#):
>
> "Saving with implied closing of the dialog" is not contiguous standard behavior on dialog driven systems.
I hadn't thought of that. You're probably right.
Then chrisjj's suggestion would work. Just have the dialog box's save the checkbox state before closing the window instead of acting like the 'Cancel' button.
> [@](#):
>
> But the best way is to implement a meta stage above the current dialog view, as I described in my last post. A sort of management tool that can manage a list of sets of actiongroups - same like the lately integrated column view management - so that the user can select one set from a list of predefined sets of actionsgroups, understanding one set of actiongoups as a workflow process.
IMO this is a different, bigger request. The one above is fairly trivial. This would certainly be nice, and we've discussed it before, but there seems to be no interest from Florian in implementing such a system. The ability to call other saved Action groups within an Action group would be similar and may even suffice as a simple means of creating such predefined sets.
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### Author:  [@chrisjj](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/chrisjj)
#### Post date: [December 18, 2007, 1:01pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/what-happened-to-options-actions/5855/9 "2007-12-18T13:01:14Z")
> "Saving with implied closing of the dialog" is not contiguous
> standard behavior on dialog driven systems.
>
> To leave the action dialog without running an actiongroup then you have to
> "save" and "cancel" the dialog, this would be the correct semantic way to leave.
Agreed. And such a Save would have more utility than a Save And Close.
> The ability to call other saved Action groups within an Action group would be
> similar and may even suffice as a simple means of creating such predefined sets.
I think it would more that suffice - and be more versatile than Save/Load Action Groups Set.
But I have to say that I would prefer any development time available for improvement of the Actions feature to be first spent on better usability of the existing functionality. Text rather than icon labels for the buttons, shortcut keys, bigger dialogs, replace the drop-down to static list etc. would make Action editing a lots smoother. And it would be great to have to option to bypass all those dialogs by being able to edit the actions and groups as a textual script.
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### Author:  [@Florian](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Florian)
#### Post date: [December 29, 2007, 7:01pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/what-happened-to-options-actions/5855/10 "2007-12-29T19:01:13Z")
With the current [Development Build](http://developer.mp3tag.de) I've added a button to the actions dialog that allows for loading and saving of configurations.
Kind regards,
Florian
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### Author:  [@DetlevD](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/DetlevD)
#### Post date: [December 31, 2007, 8:21am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/what-happened-to-options-actions/5855/11 "2007-12-31T08:21:30Z")
> [@Florian](#):
>
> With the current [Development Build](http://developer.mp3tag.de) I've added a button to the actions dialog that allows for loading and saving of configurations. Kind regards, Florian
Sehr schön so! Quite right!
In the first moment I'd have a problem to understand the difference between "Save configuration" and "Save".
Maybe the button "Save" should be renamed to "Quick Save" (tooltip: Saving the current workplace set into Mp3tag system storage)".
DD.20071231.1022.CET
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### Author:  [@JJ\_Johnson](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/JJ_Johnson)
#### Post date: [December 31, 2007, 6:57pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/what-happened-to-options-actions/5855/12 "2007-12-31T18:57:28Z")
> [@DetlevD](#):
>
> In the first moment I'd have a problem to understand the difference between "Save configuration" and "Save".
> Maybe the button "Save" should be renamed to "Quick Save" (tooltip: Saving the current workplace set into Mp3tag system storage)".
I agree, it's a little ambiguous. Perhaps more standard would be to relabel "Save configuration..." to "Save As...".
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### Author:  [@chrisjj](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/chrisjj)
#### Post date: [January 10, 2008, 10:53pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/what-happened-to-options-actions/5855/13 "2008-01-10T22:53:21Z")
Thanks! It works great for me.
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### Author:  [@Nighted](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Nighted)
#### Post date: [January 16, 2008, 8:52pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/what-happened-to-options-actions/5855/14 "2008-01-16T20:52:08Z")
Ok, I have one question sort of related to actions, so I'll ask it here.
There used to be an option that would let you replace forbidden characters (/:\*?"\<\>|) with a character of your choice right? It's easy enough to do this using Actions, but it was in the options at one time right? RIGHT?????
Unlike Actions, I liked it because it would work automatically when exporting tags to filenames. I want this back!!! Or was it ever there? hahaha
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### Author:  [@Florian](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Florian)
#### Post date: [January 18, 2008, 1:31pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/what-happened-to-options-actions/5855/15 "2008-01-18T13:31:07Z")
> [@Nighted](#):
>
> Or was it ever there?
No, it wasn't. You can use $validate to replace unwanted characters.
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### Author:  [@Nighted](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Nighted)
#### Post date: [January 18, 2008, 8:12pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/what-happened-to-options-actions/5855/16 "2008-01-18T20:12:15Z")
> [@Florian](#):
>
> No, it wasn't. You can use $validate to replace unwanted characters.
Ok thanks Florian. I didn't even know about those scripting functions. Again, anything I can imagine has already been thought out. Brilliant man, just friggin' brilliant. 🙂