Append, Prepend or Overwrite option

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kbarnes70
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Append, Prepend or Overwrite option

Post by kbarnes70 »

One of the problems at the moment with a global edit is that if you wish, for example, to add a tag (such as Foreign Language) to a group of selected movies, you can't do it using Global Edit because when you add your tag it will then delete (overwrite) all the other tags. I use IMDb tags and there can be dozens for each movie. It would be cool to have three tick boxes in the global edit pane by each relevant field, giving you the option to Append a new tag, Prepend a new tag or Overwrite the current tags with the new information. This might also apply to various other fields that one might wish to globally edit.

Kind regards,

Keith
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Conor
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Re: Append, Prepend or Overwrite option

Post by Conor »

The tags and all other multi-value fields (blue bubble) are currently append. With a smart algorithm that gives you all the options at your disposal.

1. Adding a tag will append it to all the other tags.
2. Removing a common tag will remove only that tag.
3. When there are no common tags, checking the box and leaving it blank will remove all tags.

The most complicated procedure then becomes overwrite, you have to first remove all the tags (could take two steps if there are both common and distinct tags in the selection) and then add the new tags.

The only unintuitive operation would be removing a tag that is not common to the entire selection. Most users do a search, smart collection or hand select the entries that contain a specific tag to filter and make the tag common to all selected entries, then removing it from the global edit will be intuitive. However, the faster way would be to global edit to append the tag to all selected entries,this will add it to those items missing the tag and make it a common tag, on a second global edit it can then be removed from all.
kbarnes70
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Re: Append, Prepend or Overwrite option

Post by kbarnes70 »

Conor wrote:The tags and all other multi-value fields (blue bubble) are currently append. With a smart algorithm that gives you all the options at your disposal.

1. Adding a tag will append it to all the other tags.
2. Removing a common tag will remove only that tag.
3. When there are no common tags, checking the box and leaving it blank will remove all tags.

The most complicated procedure then becomes overwrite, you have to first remove all the tags (could take two steps if there are both common and distinct tags in the selection) and then add the new tags.

The only unintuitive operation would be removing a tag that is not common to the entire selection. Most users do a search, smart collection or hand select the entries that contain a specific tag to filter and make the tag common to all selected entries, then removing it from the global edit will be intuitive. However, the faster way would be to global edit to append the tag to all selected entries,this will add it to those items missing the tag and make it a common tag, on a second global edit it can then be removed from all.
Conor - thanks for taking the time to explain that in detail. I hadn't realised I could simply append a tag while doing a global edit.

Kind regards,

Keith
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