Moving text from description to attributes

[Ooteboe]

So now i'm using atrributes and it pleases me a lot. I can reorder info that i gathered all into the description field, and cut/paste it into several attributes. It makes my DB a lot clearer.
But can i automate the cut/paste from description into an attribute-field? I have some specific info between brackets [] in the desciption. Can I cut and paste the brackets and all that's inbetween into an attribute? Doing this by hand is quite annoying...

Thanks, Hans

[ubacher]

A Metadata Template would let you copy Attributes to Description but not the other way round.

Maybe that would be a desirable addition worth a feature request.

[Mario]

Keeping the same data in both Attributes and Metadata is not very common. It creates redundancy and potential out-of-sync problems.

If this is a one-time cleanup task you're planning, I would use the Text Export module (in the Import & Export Panel) to export the descriptions to a CSV file.
The source fields for the export are specified using variables, which gives you a lot of flexibility for formatting the output (e.g., exporting only a part of the description, doing replacements or other cleanup).

Then use the Import CSV Files module to import data from the CSV file into Attributes.

[Ooteboe]

Thanks. It's definitely a onetime procedure. I'll look at the export/import modules.

Hans

[Ooteboe]

If this is a one-time cleanup task you're planning, I would use the Text Export module (in the Import & Export Panel) to export the descriptions to a CSV file.
The source fields for the export are specified using variables, which gives you a lot of flexibility for formatting the output (e.g., exporting only a part of the description, doing replacements or other cleanup).

Then use the Import CSV Files module to import data from the CSV file into Attributes.

Export/import as described here works great! Thanks. Just one question though: after importing into atrributes, I want to delete this information in the description-tag. Deleting all info is simple. But deleting just the info between brackets ['info'] and keeping the rest, is that possible with a metadata-template?

Hans

[Mario]

No. Deleting a section of the XMP description enclosed in [] is nothing most users will ever have a need for. It is even likely that you are the only user with this specific way to working with metadata.
The only solution I see is doing it manually or writing an IMatch app which does this.

[ubacher]

Maybe you can use the same approach and write out the Description in a csv file, then remove the part between brackets
with an editor (I would use Notepad++ and generate a macro which does this)

Then read in the file to replace the description with the new one.
(Not sure if this works - but this is how I would approach it!)

[Ooteboe]

Thank you. I will try that.

BTW: for my music files I work with the tagger from MusiChi. It lets you search and replace (parts of) any tag. And within the searching you can use several wildcarts such as

• . Or '*', or test* etc. I find this a very handy tool to clean up my tags.
  
  Hans