Help with -sep command when importing keywords from csv

[jmehre]

Hello,  Pardon me if this has been addressed already in the forums.  I looked but could not find an answer.

I am trying to import keywords into about 500 images using a simple csv file that has only 2 fields (SourceFile & Keywords).  I'm having trouble getting multiple keywords to be recognized separately.  When I run exiftool, it applies keywords but when I check them out in Bridge or Photoshop, they are just lumped into a single string. 

Here is the statement I used in Terminal:   exiftool -csv=embed_API.csv . –sep ", "  -P -overwrite_original_in_place -r -v2 -use MWG

1) Is this the correct use of -sep? I tried other delimiters and still couldn't get it to work, so I must be doing something incorrect.

2) Does it matter if the keywords field in my csv are qualified with quotes or not?  (For example, if I view the csv in Excel, it only shows keyword1, keyword2, keyword3 - but if I open the csv using TextEdit I can see that it is in fact "keyword1, keyword2, keyword3").  Could this be the reason the -sep command isn't working for me? I tried stripping out the quotes and using a different delimiter keyword1|keyword2|keyword3 but that didn't work either.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

[Phil Harvey]

It looks to me as if you are doing the right thing.  If you could attach a sample csv fle and the exact command you are using I should be able to figure out the problem.

- Phil

[jmehre]

Thanks for the response, Phil.  Attached is the csv I was using. 

My files are on an external drive, so when I open up terminal, I first change the default directory by saying,

cd "/Volumes/Image Library/"

Then, I ran the following statement:

exiftool -csv=embed_API.csv . –sep ", "  -P -overwrite_original_in_place -r -v2 -use MWG

[Phil Harvey]

Thanks.

This works fine for me to add separate keywords to the image.  The only problem is that you need a normal ASCII dash in front of the "sep" option.  The command you posted has a funny Unicode dash-like character here instead.  But if this was the problem, you should have seen the message "No SourceFile '–sep' in imported CSV database" and "No SourceFile ', ' in imported CSV database".

- Phil

[jmehre]

Thank you! Thank you!  I retyped the statement in terminal and that seemed to work!  I had been copying/pasting the statements I was testing into a Word document and I'm guessing that's where the funny Unicode dash-like character came into existence. 

I'm seeing this kind of thing now in my terminal output:

Rewriting IPTC
    - IPTC:Keywords = 'Ann, Polar_Star, Sat_Phone, scenery'
    + IPTC:Keywords = 'Ann'
    + IPTC:Keywords = 'Polar_Star'
    + IPTC:Keywords = 'Sat_Phone'
    + IPTC:Keywords = 'scenery'

Best!

[Phil Harvey]

Ah. I should have guessed cutting and pasting from Microsoft Word.  Another user recently had a similar problem.

- Phil