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Recovery: how to apply old correct tag info onto song with new wrong tag info

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sissim:
I'm confronting a situation of disastrous proportion, having lost about 5gb of songs. I'm in the process of gathering from any and all sources laying about (flash cards, ipods, cd's, etc) whatever songs I happen to still have. However, with a lot of the ripping and some import stuff, the tag info is incorrect or incomplete. (I had a superb library and had spent a lot of time inputting tag info (ratings, etc, ) .

I was feeling grateful that I could still see the old tag info in my library (although X'd since it wasn't finding the file) but to my dismay, at some point, it so-called updated (I'm sure somewhere I have it set that way and haven't paid attention to it) and cleaned up everything so that I no longer had the old tag info (with broken links). I found a copy of this old tag info on another computer and did a backup of the library. I'm planning to restore the library from that backup, which I'm hoping will give me back the correct tags with the broken links.

Here's the question: is there any way I can take the song file, and replace its tag info with one of those tags with the broken links?? I know it's complicated and hard to explain but I'd be eternally grateful for any ideas. I'm already heartsick at what happened.
thank you so much
Sissi :'(

JimH:
You might be able to adjust the new library to match the old one.  MC has some tools that will help.

For example,  you can do a find and replace to change D: to C: .

You can use MC's Library Tools to move your metadata from the library to the files and vice versa.

MC can move files, based on your metadata.  This is in Library Tools/Move, Copy, Rename.  You have to check the directory box and fill in the tags you want.

You might experiment with a few files before you do very many.

Once you have your files where they were, a restore of an old library might work.

sissim:
I really don't want to seem blind, but in looking at all the Library Tools (I went to Tools/Library Tools/) and going into each function, I couldn't identify the one to use that you mentioned: "You can use MC's Library Tools to move your metadata from the library to the files and vice versa." Exactly where is that? Or what is the function called?

At the moment I have the correct library with its data. I have to at least make certain that the file name of the new ripped song matches the old file name, right? (which is a huge job in itself). Then would I import from the folder that holds the new songs? (which is the same that held the songs before)
tnx again

sissim:
I just did something that repeated exactly the disaster I caused the other day...and now I've just confirmed that it was something I did with MC that lost everything. Here's what I just did which made all the files disappear:

-Old library had all files as being in M:\Music Current\*.*   (asterisks in this case being the song names)
-Went into Library Tools/rename, move and copy files
-Went to bottom option of Find & Replace

-Since my current batch of song files were in B-My Music Library, I put in:

Find What: M:\Music Current\  (without asterisks at all)
Replace With:  c:\Users\Vista Brat\Documents\B-My Music Library\   (without asterisks at all)

Has my huge mistake been in skipping the asterisks?

It's been driving me nuts since when these files disappear, they REALLY disappear -- not in recycle bin. Last time it took me 2 days of searching unsuccessfully and tnx to MC forum I finally used Recuva and pulled some stuff back but it's all mixed in with everything else on my hard drive. So right now it redid that (well, I've only wasted a day so far with ripping to redo)

JimH:
Make sure you have the latest build:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=57509.0

Find and Replace won't move files.

Please re-read my post above.

Try a few files before you do very many.

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