Hi all,

In many places in MP3Tag, values that typed into fields (e.g. the Filter bar or the Replace dialogue's "Field" field) are stored and used to "autofill" that field in future. However, the values are stored even the text is not wanted (e.g. a typo or syntax error).

I know that there is a method of deleting items from the filter's autofill list, but there doesn't seem to be any way of doing this for other lists (e.g. the "Field" name in the Replace dialogue).

I've been using MP3Tag for several years now and, over time, I've mistyped just about anything that I could do. Because of this, my autofill lists are now almost useless - they contain more syntax errors, obsolete items and misspellings than correct ones.

I guess that I could delete mp3tag.cfg (where they seem to be stored, along with other config data), but that seems like overkill.

Is there any way that I can clear (or better, edit) the stored autofill data?

Thanks

If you press Ctrl-Del for a selected entry and then invoke an action that saves something then the entry is removed form the list.
YOu can also reach this function if you press the right-arrow next to the input field to open the menu and select either the function "Clear from list" or "Clear entire list" (my translation - look for a function that has a similar meaning)

Thanks for the reply - I've tried your Ctrl-del suggestion but without any luck so far.

I know that deleting items from the "Filter" field is possible using the "Remove from history" option from the menu at the right hand side of the Filter field, but the problem is that other fields with autofill don't have the same menu at the right hand side (e.g. the one that selects the field to be processed in the "Replace" dialogue) - these are the ones that get "polluted" by unwanted items.

I tried the Ctrl-del suggestion on both the Replace box and the Filter field, but without success. Is this process documented anywhere? If not, could you give more details? Also, is this function a recent addition?

(Note - for anyone else reading this, be careful - Experimenting with this could be dangerous. Ctrl-del is also the keystroke to delete a file, if you type it when a file or group of files is selected, the files will be deleted!).

Thanks again for the reply.

Found it!

It's Shift-Del, not Ctrl-Del!

As ohrenkino said, you do need to do something to make a "save" happen afterward.

Thanks for your help!

For anyone interested, here's a step-by-step description of the simplest way (that I've found so far) of removing unwanted items from MP3Tag's Field list:

1. Create a worthless working copy of an MP3 file - it will be rewritten, so don't use anything valuable - and open it in MP3Tag.
2. Select the file, and click the "Actions (Quick)" button on the toolbar.
3. Select "Replace" from the drop-down list of Action Types and click OK.
4. The drop-down list for "Field" will now allow you to select from all the field names that MP3Tag has ever seen - select one to be deleted, and press Shift-Del.
5. Repeat Step 4 for all unwanted fields.
6. Use the drop-down list to select a field that you want to keep (e.g. ARTIST)
7. In "Original:", type "A", and in "Replace With:", type "A" (i.e. - replace "A" with "A").
8. Click OK to perform the replace operation (this saves the changes to the list - "Cancel" will discard the changes).

The Field list is now modified, for all drop-down Field lists in MP3Tag, (and the MP3 file will have been rewritten).

Thanks again to ohrenkino for pointing me in the right direction.

P.S. Be careful - Only delete what you know to be unwanted - I wouldn't like to guess what bad things might happen if you delete an important field name accidentally.

Please check again, I think it is not a must, to save some dummy entry, in order to leave the dialog and make the change durable, when using the 'pick list context menu'.
Thus, the change is immediately permanent.

DD.20120427.1355.CEST

I did check before posting, and I've just checked again - the behaviour of MP3Tag 2.46a is as I've described. If you click "Cancel" on the dialog box, after deleting items from the list, the changes aren't made. It's not possible to press "OK" on this dialog unless some text is present in the "Original" field - the OK button is disabled until text is entered. As a result, it's necessary to make a change in order to save the deletions to the list.

I did try looking at other dialogue boxes to see if there is one which doesn't require a change, but couldn't find one. The Extended Tags dialog also behaves in a similar way.

Could you give more details of a sequence that you think will make the changes permanent without altering any files?

Thanks

2.46a is quite old.

2.50 is the recent version and there have been improvements regarding this issue.

OK - that would explain it.

Unfortunately, I'm stuck on 2.46 for the moment, owing to the changes in field names in 2.47. The changes break all of my action scripts (133 of them), and it needs some effort to update them all which, unfortunately, I haven't had time to do. Running my existing scripts on 2.47+ would result in "custom" (TXXX) frames being created for fields such as ALBUMSORTORDER which (AFAIUI) MP3Tag 2.47+ doesn't recognise any more. I got caught out last time fields were renamed, and had to spend hours finding and fixing the resulting TXXX tags, so I'm not upgrading until I've found time to update and test all of the scripts in one single operation.

Thanks for the clarification, anyway. I guess that the method I listed above is still good for those people on older versions of MP3Tag.