Windows Comments?

[terrypin]

Hi Phil,

Is there any way to get Windows Explorer Comments supported by ExifTool please? If duplicated from either JPG Comment or IPTC Caption, it woud be a convenient way to view them.



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Terry, East Grinstead, UK

[Phil Harvey]

Hi Terry,

Did you read FAQ number 3?

- Phil

[terrypin]

Thanks Phil. I'd briefly scanned the whole FAQ a couple of days ago. But just gone back and read #3 properly after your post. But I don't see how it helps answer my question?

Do you mean, have I checked whether Windows Comments already appear in the full set of metadata reported by ExifTool? If so, yes, I'd already pretty well established that it doesn't. But to double check I just now wrote a Windows comment abcxyz, applied the command suggested in FAQ 3 and searched for it in the full output. Not there.

What I meant was: is there some clever hack or trick that could enable ExifTool to write to Windows Comments? I guess that's a No then!

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Terry, East Grinstead, UK

[Phil Harvey]

Hi Terry,

I don't understand this.  I thought that Windows wrote this information into the file.  But if ExifTool isn't reading it, then it isn't in the file.

- Phil

[StarGeek]

As mentioned previously, the tag you're looking for is the XPComment tag.  That's where windows is adding this info.  I previously mentioned this is how it works in Windows 8 and I just verified it's the same for Windows XP.

The command to see it would be ExifTool -XPComment <file>.  To change it with exiftool, ExifTool -XPComment="New Comment" <file>

edit: grammar and additional info

[terrypin]

Thanks StarGeek. My bad - I somehow managed to miss all 3 earlier replies from you, HaNu and Tarn on this, sorry.    Premature senility, coupled with starting too many posts within a few days!

Phil: I used this from FAQ 3c
First, make sure you are looking at the right information. Use ExifTool with a command like this to extract all information from the file, along with the location it was written:
exiftool -a -G1 -s c:\images\test.jpg

But running this didn't find my XPComment
exiftool -a -G1 -s "C:\Docs\My Pictures\PHOTOS\Tests\TestForXPComment.jpg"

Today I tried this from the detailed documentation:
exiftool -a -u -g1 "C:\Docs\My Pictures\PHOTOS\Tests\TestForXPComment.jpg"

which did find it.

I gather XPComment is therefore classified by ExifTool as an 'Unknown' tag? I find the whole subject of Tags bewildering. So many conflicts, no apparent standardisation, ambiguous labels and descriptions, reports of inconsistencies, etc. So this is probably a naive question, but in what sense is XPComment 'unknown'?

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Terry, East Grinstead, UK

[Phil Harvey]

Hi Terry,

XPComment should always appear in the output if it exists.  It is not unknown, so it doesn't require the -u option.  And its name is unique so the -a will have no effect either.

I'm guessing you either checked the wrong file, or Windows hadn't written it yet, or you just missed it in your earlier test.

- Phil