Small Steps Forward

This is a post for those of us on a Mac with metadata/tagging issues.

There are times when Spotlight Comments disappear from a file’s Get Info box, and they aren’t really gone. You can check this in Terminal. Say I have an Apple Chowder recipe file with an empty comments box. First, I open Terminal and type in mdls and a space, then select the recipe file and drag it into the Terminal window (so I don’t have to type in the filename). I end up with the following command:

mdls /Users/tortoise/Documents/recipes/apple\ chowder.rtf

I hit enter and get something back like this

/Users/tortoise/Documents/recipes/apple chowder.rtf -------------
kMDItemAttributeChangeDate = 2007-04-20 03:41:14 -0400
kMDItemContentCreationDate = 2007-01-28 21:47:43 -0500
kMDItemContentModificationDate = 2007-01-31 17:06:51 -0500
kMDItemContentType = "public.rtf"
kMDItemContentTypeTree = ("public.rtf", "public.text", "public.data", "public.item", "public.content")
kMDItemDisplayName = "apple chowder"
kMDItemFinderComment = " &recipe &breakfast"
kMDItemFSContentChangeDate = 2007-01-31 17:06:51 -0500
kMDItemFSCreationDate = 2007-01-28 21:47:43 -0500
kMDItemFSCreatorCode = 0
kMDItemFSFinderFlags = 16
kMDItemFSInvisible = 0
kMDItemFSIsExtensionHidden = 1
kMDItemFSLabel = 0
kMDItemFSName = "apple chowder.rtf"
kMDItemFSNodeCount = 0
kMDItemFSOwnerGroupID = 502
kMDItemFSOwnerUserID = 502
kMDItemFSSize = 1638
kMDItemFSTypeCode = 0
kMDItemID = 2880424
kMDItemKind = "Rich Text Format (RTF) document"
kMDItemLastUsedDate = 2007-01-31 17:06:51 -0500
kMDItemUsedDates = (2007-01-31 17:06:51 -0500)


I look for the kMDItemFinderComment line, which shows tags for the file (in this case, “&recipe” and “&breakfast”). If the file had no tags, the line would not exist. It does exist in this case which means that the tags are still with the file, they just aren’t showing.

Another way to find the tags is to type “mdls” and a space into the Terminal window, drag the file into the window, then type ” | grep FinderComment”, like so:

mdls /Users/tortoise/Documents/recipes/apple\ chowder.rtf | grep FinderComment

This serves to isolate just the info we want and not all of the Spotlight metadata, and our result (after pressing enter) is this:

kMDItemFinderComment = " &recipe &breakfast"

If my file had no tags, I’d just get a Terminal command line.

The bad part about disappearing tags is that if I opened the Get Info window and typed in some new tags for this file, it would overwrite the tags that are already there. Most annoying. Especially when working with a bunch of files. So it’s important to restore the tags.

How to get the comments back into the Get Info window? I started tackling the problem with AppleScript, but … whew. My geek skills were inadequate for the task. Then I found TagBot. The program isn’t free, but you can use 6 tags with it without registering.

In TagBot’s Tag Palette, I created a tag with the most unique name possible: — a28nine — so it wouldn’t match any of my existing tags. I then selected all the files with the “missing” comments and dragged them onto the TagBot a28nine tag in the palette. TagBot restored the original tags and added the a28nine tag. I then had TagBot remove the a28nine tag from all files (by selecting ctrl-clicking on the tag in the palette and choosing the “Remove From All Files” option).

Tada! No applause necessary. Just go out and spread the word. TagBot.