Bulk edit region field

[lones710]

Hi guys,

I added some romsets BEFORE there was a region field, so now these romsets have an empty region field, while recently imported romsets have the region set according to the file name. How can I "rescan" or bulk edit the region field?

 

Thanks in advance!

Edited December 9, 2016 by lones710

[SentaiBrad]

You can re-add your games if you'd like. This will remove favorites, stats or anything you've set up for the games, but re-import and unchecking all of the image boxes will have it import really fast, and all of the old artwork will re-attach automatically.

Otherwise, if the option is not in the bulk edit wizard (Click a game, Ctrl + A to highlight them all, right click edit) then it's not there. You are more than welcome to request this field on the BitBucket. You can make a quick search to see if it has been requested, and if it has please thumbs up that one instead of creating another ticket. If it doesn't exist, create it and thumbs it up.

Edit: The BitBucket is at the issues / requests link at the top of the forums.

[lones710]

Thank you for your answer! First of all, the region field is not missing in the bulk wizard. But the thing is, I have JPN, EUR and USA games, and I do not have an option to bulk edit JUST the EUR games for example. A solution for this would be a custom filter for file names (so e.g. I could make a custom "USA" filter and get all the US-Region games, then bulk edit the region fild --> problem solved). I already made a Bitbucket request for said filter feature.

 

Another question: When I re-add my games, will I loose all custom notes and other edits, or will they stay?

 

Best Regards

[DOS76]

I'm pretty sure any custom notes you added will be deleted when you delete the game deleting the game removes it from the xml so I believe the notes are kept there for each individual game. Your images music and videos aren't tied to the xml and that is why they aren't deleted like the notes when you remove games.

[SentaiBrad]

What Derek said is correct, the only thing kept related to the games is Media, i.e. images, music, pdf's, etc.

[lones710]

I solved my problem, I am posting the solution in case anyone else has the same problem:

The Launchbox database files are xml-files, as anyone here knows. I simply imported them into excel, and used the following formula for my region field:

=IF(ISERROR(FIND("(USA)";A2)>0);IF(ISERROR(FIND("(Japan)";A2)>0);IF(ISERROR(FIND("(Europe)";A2)>0);"";"Europe");"Japan");"North America")

 

I exported the file again as a regular xml, and everything works perfectly. Generally spoken, Excel is great for organizing your database and doing bulk edits like these. Wonder which games have a missing manual? Just let Excel sort your games by the manual-field, and you immediately see everything you want to see. I wonder why noone recommends Excel for these kinds of problems (I've seen many threads like "How can I filter games which have "xyz" missing"). Brad, I hope this tip can help the community in the future (or is it it already a recommended tool for this kind of stuff?).

Best Regards and thanks for the input so far to both of you

Edit: I forgot to say what the formula does: The formula fills out the region field for "(USA)", "(Europe)" and "(Japan)". If there is no match, the field is left empty. Of course this naming scheme is for no-intro roms in this case.

Edit 2: Of course I mean the platform xml files!

Edited December 10, 2016 by lones710

[SentaiBrad]

Which XML did you edit? Your platform XML's? If you edited Metadata.xml then this will reset every single time it's updated, which can be often.

[lones710]

Of course the respective Platform xmls. Metadata wouldn't make ANY sense as you correctly put it.