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More => Old Versions => Media Center 14 (Development Ended) => Topic started by: vagskal on January 21, 2010, 04:28:13 am

Title: Export playlist - Please change text file delimiter
Post by: vagskal on January 21, 2010, 04:28:13 am
I was trying to export a playlist with all the music files in my library to a text file for import into Excel. I use " | " as a delimiter in the tags for tracks with multiple artists or composers. It turned out that MC is using the exact same delimiter (|) when exporting the playlist as a text file. This means that for tracks with multiple artists or composers, the exported information goes into the wrong columns making it virtually impossible to use the exported text file with Excel.

Please change the text file delimiter to tab, which should never be used within tags/fields in MC.

Any tips on how to get a correct list into Excel, without changing the tags/MC fields, in the meantime would be appreciated.
Title: Re: Export playlist - Please change text file delimiter
Post by: StFeder on January 21, 2010, 05:08:29 am
I know, you're asking for a way "without changing the tags/MC fields", but anyway:

Why not, as a workaround, use "Search & Replace" and replace all "|" in your tags. You now can export it as a textfile and than undo the changes. As a workaround...
Title: Re: Export playlist - Please change text file delimiter
Post by: Alex B on January 21, 2010, 06:49:33 am
I stopped using delimited text export when Matt revealed that the whole visible table can be copied to clipboard and pasted to Excel or other programs (that was a few years ago). It wasn't obvious to me before for that.

Now I just create a view scheme, playlist or smartlist that contains the files and columns I want to copy, press Ctrl+A, and copy/paste the contents to an Excel spreadsheet.
Title: Re: Export playlist - Please change text file delimiter
Post by: vagskal on January 21, 2010, 11:46:49 am
I stopped using delimited text export when Matt revealed that the whole visible table can be copied to clipboard and pasted to Excel or other programs (that was a few years ago). It wasn't obvious to me before for that.

Now I just create a view scheme, playlist or smartlist that contains the files and columns I want to copy, press Ctrl+A, and copy/paste the contents to an Excel spreadsheet.

Thanks for the tip! If I select the entire playlist with +112k files and 11 columns nothing is copied. Is there some limitation on what can be copied to the Windows clipboard? I, however, managed to copy the data in chunks of under 9,000 files. Thanks. Nice feature.

A change of the delimiter in the text file would make things easier with large playlists.