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Author: redwing

Background[]

MB, natively, offers two ways of copy & paste tags between multiple files: (1) all regular tags & artwork and (2) all regular tags, artwork, play count & rating. By default you can use Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V for copy & paste #1, and optionally configure a hotkey for copy & paste #2. So far so great. But what if you want to copy & paste some specific tags of your own choice between multiple files such as "all tags but title" or "all tags except artist & album artist"? Currently this kind of tagging task is quite time-consuming to get done for the simple goal, requiring a series of tedious micro operations. Often you end up with re-tagging same tracks multiple times during the process, not to mention risking losing some important tag values thru bulk copy & paste.

Now this kind of task can be more easily and safely handled if you install boroda74's Additional Tagging Tools plugin (http://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=3833.0). The two newly added commands "Copy tags to clipboard" and "Paste tags from clipboard" can be executed from Tools> Tagging Tools main menu, context menu by configuring the plugin option under Preferences> Plugins, or as a hotkey/toolbar button.


Copy & paste selected tags[]

If you select some files and run "Copy tags to clipboard" command, the following pane will show up.

Copy

You can configure what tags (of selected source files) will be copied to clipboard. The pane is resizable to show all ticked/unticked fields at a glance without the need of scrolling the list. Once you click on "Copy" button, your field selection and the adjusted pane size will be remembered by the plugin.

Then select the same number of target files, execute "Paste tags from clipboard" and confirm the selected tags of source files were copied to each corresponding field of target files.


Single to Multiple files[]

If the number of selected target files is different from the number of source files, the plugin will pop up an error message and won't execute pasting.

Copy11

But there is an exception to this. If you copy & paste from a single file to multiple files, the plugin pops up confirmation dialog instead of error message.

Copy2

This is for such use cases where you got a new album and want to copy "all but title" fields from a single track you already had and tagged completely to the rest of album. Thus this supports multiplying of tags from single file to multiple files.


Copy selected tags to a spreadsheet[]

This new command can effectively replace the current "send to clipboard tags" feature under Preference> Tags (2). Instead of entering a custom template to the box, you can use "Copy tags to clipboard" command for multiple fields of your own choosing, and directly paste the clipboard data to a text file or a spreadsheet. Each field will be delimited by a tab character.

Copy3


Notes[]

1. Copy & paste of "artwork" and "lyrics" is not supported yet.

2. There's a known flaw with handling "sort-" fields. If you include, for instance, "sort artist" field to your copy setting, the plugin will write "artist" value of source files to "sort artist" field of target files even when "sort artist" fields of source files are blank. The same goes for "sort album artist" field. Hence the two fields are unticked by default, and it is recommended you do not include those fields in your copy setting unless you want to fill those "sort-" fields with corresponding artist values.

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