# Year formatting
**URL:** https://community.mp3tag.de/t/year-formatting/13114
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [February 19, 2012, 5:58pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/year-formatting/13114 "2012-02-19T17:58:03Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Mirlynn](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Mirlynn)
#### Post date: [February 19, 2012, 5:58pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/year-formatting/13114/1 "2012-02-19T17:58:03Z")
I am not sure why but I have some dates appearing in my "Year" tags/frames. Meaning, for some tracks, I see "1987-01-01" instead of just "1987".
2 Questions arise...
1. Why would the YEAR frame allow a full 10 digit date to be stored?
2. What is the best approach for formatting the %year% frame to simply show ONLY the YEAR (yyyy)?
Thanks in advance for any and all responses!
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### Author:  [@ohrenkino](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/ohrenkino)
#### Post date: [February 19, 2012, 6:17pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/year-formatting/13114/2 "2012-02-19T18:17:15Z")
It is sometimes very difficult to answer a "why" question ... so I try the second one:
Create an action of the type "Format tag field" for the field YEAR
Enter as format string:
$left(%year%,4)
This should reduce the length of the entry in YEAR to just 4 ... and if it was already equal to 4 then it won't do any harm. 😉
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### Author:  [@stevehero](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/stevehero)
#### Post date: [February 19, 2012, 9:46pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/year-formatting/13114/3 "2012-02-19T21:46:44Z")
> [@Mirlynn](#):
>
> I am not sure why but I have some dates appearing in my "Year" tags/frames. Meaning, for some tracks, I see "1987-01-01" instead of just "1987".
Regarding this question. I'll answer why i use this personally. Theres DJ software called 'Traktor Pro' which utilsies the year field in the format YYYY-MM-DD OR YYYY-DD-MM. So it shows up in the format YYYY/MM/DD OR YYYY/DD/MM. Also iTunes recognises that as just YYYY. So there's one standpoint for why to use that format.
You might also what to back-up the YEAR tag to a BACKUPYEAR tag before you go deleting valuable data.
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### Author:  [@ohrenkino](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/ohrenkino)
#### Post date: [February 20, 2012, 5:27am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/year-formatting/13114/4 "2012-02-20T05:27:35Z")
> [@stevehero](#):
>
> You might also what to back-up the YEAR tag to a BACKUPYEAR tag before you go deleting valuable data.
I think the proper place for such a longish date is in RELEASEDATE.
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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/year-formatting/13114/5 "2026-02-09T12:23:40Z")