Edit tags with the Tag Editor (Spreadsheet mode)

Introduction

The Tag Editor (Spreadsheet Mode) is a tag editor in Helium Music Manager which allows you to quickly edit multiple files at once using an easy to use spreadsheet user interface.

The major benefit with this tag editor is that it shows a great overview of all your files' tags at once, as opposed to the Tag Editor where instead you work with one file at a time.

Tasks

• Locating the files you would like to adjust tags for
• Adjusting tag contents
• Capitalization and word replacing
• Downloading Track Information from the Internet
• Customizing the Tag Editor (Spreadsheet mode)
• Special functions
• Tips and tricks

Locating the files you would like to adjust tags for

Since the Tag Editor (Spreadsheet mode) allows you to work with several files at once, it's very suitable for use when adjusting tags for complete albums.
Therefore, this example will demonstrate how easy it is to adjust tags for a complete album.

Locate all the tracks for the album you would like to adjust tags for from any of the browsing views available. Select all files from this album from the Track List and start the Tag Editor (Spreadsheet mode) by clicking the Tools | Edit Tags (Spreadsheet mode)... from the Main Menu or press the keystroke Shift+CTRL+E.

It is not strictly necessary that your files are all sorted in the same order as they are on the original album (e.g. track1, track2, track3...), but when you are working with complete albums we do recommend that you sort your files in the track list into their correct order.
This will simplify tasks such as auto-numbering and track information downloading from CDDB, FreeDB or similar internet data sources.

The picture to the left shows 15 files from one and the same album presented in the Track List. The files have been sorted based on their track number so that they are in the same order as they appears on the original album. You can quickly sort the items in track number order by clicking the Track column. You can also drag 'n' move the items in the Track List to quickly move one or more selected files to a specific position. It's important that the files are in this order if you are planning to use Internet information-lookup sources such as CDDB and FreeDB. These services depends on the files original order.

 

Adjusting tag contents

When the Tag Editor (Spreadsheet mode) starts you will see a spreadsheet grid with as many rows as the number of files you selected to work with in the previous step. (See the screenshot to the right).

To edit the contents in a specific cell, simply highlight the cell and start to type.
If you would like to edit existing contents in a cell, highlight the cell and press F2 or Enter.
Note: There are different input controls that will be displayed depending on the type of data in the cell you have selected. These input controls are described in detail in the topic "Tag Editor (Spreadsheet Mode)" in the help file.

The real power with the Tag Editor (Spreadsheet mode) is the capability to copy a value to several fields with just one click. To perform this operation, select the cell containing the value you would like to copy and press the button located on the bottom toolbar. The Apply command will work for all field values.

The Tag Editor (Spreadsheet mode) comes with even more functions that help to speed up your tagging, Auto Track Numbering is the next function that will be described here. Auto Track Numbering only works with numerical fields and it's intended to be used mainly with the Current Track column. To use this function, simply select any row in the current track column and click the button. You will now see that the current track value have changed to a sequence of numbers starting with 1 for the first file. (e.g. 1, 2, 3, 4...).

You can also a few other special functions that can be reached from the spreadsheet's context menu:

• Extract Remix:
  This function will extract a part of the selected cells text and put the result in the remix column. This function is specifically useful when your title tag-value contains remix (e.g. "Title Of Track (Radio Edit)"). After you use the Extract Remix function, title would in this example have the value "Title Of Track" and remix will have the value "Radio Edit".

• Extract Subtitle:
  Works similar to Extract Remix, but using the subtitle field instead of remix.

• Extract Artist-Title:
  This function will split the selected cell into two parts, artist and title, using a dash as separator. For a cell contains the text "Madonna - Like A Virgin", artist will contain "Madonna" and title will contain "Like A Virgin" after using this command. There are several variations of this command available with different separators and field orders.

• Extract Multiple Artists:
  This function will extract multiple artists from the selected cells text. If your artist tag-value is "Basement Jaxx feat. Skillah vs. DJ Something" and you use the Extract Multiple Artist function, it will result in that the following artist will be extracted and stored in the multiple artists tag:

• Basement Jaxx

• Skillah

• DJ Something

Capitalization and word replacing

Helium Music Manager uses a unique system of auto correcting rules, defined in the Options under the Auto Correction.
If you have Auto Correction active, all textual information that you enter in any field in the Tag Editor will be formatted using these rules.  You can toggle Auto Correction on/off by clicking the button in the bottom control toolbar.

Capitalization means that entered text will be case-formatted using the selected rules. For example, you can choose between automatic uppercase or lowercase conversion as well as custom capitalization. We recommend that you use custom capitalization for the most readable results. Custom capitalization will convert the character following a special character defined in the customized capitalization list to Uppercase.
Custom capitalization also takes advantage of a user defined list of words which always will be capitalized as they are entered in the list. For example if you have entered dj in a tag field, the basic capitalization will convert it to Dj. If you define DJ in the custom capitalization word list it will always be capitalized to DJ.

Word/Text replacer is another part of the auto correction which simply replaces a defined text with another, either as whole words or as a part of another text.

Downloading Track Information from the Internet

The Tag Editor (Spreadsheet mode) comes with the capability to download track information from the Internet. This helps to reduce your typing either partially or completely.

To download all track information for the selected albums you must make sure that:

• The album is complete - All files are present in the list and they are not partial (they should be in full-length).

• The files are in the same order as they appear on the original album. This is described in the step "Locating the files you would like to adjust tags for" above.

When these two criteria are fulfilled, click the Download button and select a plug-in from the list which you would like to use.

You can also download information for a specific album when multiple albums are loaded into the Tag Editor (Spreadsheet Mode). In this situation, make sure that the two conditions above are met, then select the tracks for the album and click the Download button.

Customizing the Tag Editor (Spreadsheet mode)

The Tag Editor (Spreadsheet mode) can be customized so that you only will see the tag columns that you have an interest in.
To customize the columns that you want to be visible, click the Customize button.

This will open a dialog similar to the screen shown to the right. This dialog works in a similar fashion to the dialog that you will see when you are customizing the active columns for the Track List.

You can select (by the check boxes) the columns that should be visible or not visible, how wide each column should be as well as re-ordering the columns into a order which fits your needs.

 

 

Special Functions

The Tag Editor (Spreadsheet mode) comes with a couple of special functions that can help you to increase the speed of your tagging.
These special functions are related to copy, paste & cut commands and are all located on the bottom toolbar:

All content of a textual or a value cell can easily be copied by highlighting the cell and pressing the standard copy key combination, CTRL+C.
You can cut contents of a cell by pressing CTRL+X, instead of CTRL+C.

To paste copied contents, simply select highlight the target cell and press the key combination CTRL+V.
The paste command comes with one specific feature which is worthy of mention. If you select multiple cells in a row, then the content in the clipboard will be pasted into all the selected cells. This is a technique which allows you to clone the content of one cell very quickly into several target cells.

The rightmost button is the undo button which can be accessed quickly by CTRL+Z.

 

If you ever have used Excel, you will find that the Tag Editor (Spreadsheet mode) is in many ways similar to Excel.

Accesible from the context menu is the Excel menu item, which have two available commands in it's drop-down menu:

• Paste from Excel
• Copy to Excel

Paste from Excel is a command which allows you to paste data from the clipboard directly into the cells in the Tag Editor (Spreadsheet mode).
The data that should be pasted must be tab separated data (which it automatically will become if it's copied from Excel).
The paste operation will start to paste the data from the highlighted cell, and fill up as many rows/columns as there is available in the clipboard.
 
Copy to Excel is a command which copies data from the Tag Editor (Spreadsheet mode) into the clipboard in Excel format.
When you click the button, a dialog is shown which allows you to select the data you would like to copy:

 
As you can see in the image, you can either copy all the contents of the selected column, all the contents of the selected row or all the available content.
When you have copied your data into the clipboard, you can paste it into Excel, perform additional editing and then copy the edited contents back to the tag Editor (Spreadsheet mode) using the Paste from Excel command.
 

Tips and tricks

• Find a good work flow and take advantage of the customization possibilities to reduce the amount of visible columns to match only the fields you need to work with.

• A suggested work flow is described below:

  1. Locate the files you would like to work with
  2. Download information with one of the plug-ins (complete albums only, described previously above)
  3. Use Auto Track Numbering to automatically set the track number for the selected tracks
  4. Set the Total Tracks value in one of the cells. Use the Apply command to copy this value to all of the other cells.
  5. Repeat step 4 for all fields containing the same information for all files (e.g. Album, Album Artist, Album Subtitle, Publisher, Rel. Year, Rec. Year, Release Type and possibly other fields).
  6. Apply the result to the files by clicking the OK button.