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Add text with line breaks to iTunes' comment box Apps
iTunes provides a way to comment your music files, movies, or whatever -- simply open the Get Info window (Command-I) and type in your comments in the Comments box of the Info window. But for some reason, you can't use line breaks (new lines) in this box -- both the Return and Enter keys trigger the OK button.

So go in SubEthaEdit, TextEdit, or any other pure text editor, type your text with normal new lines, and then copy and paste it into the comment field in iTunes.

[robg adds: I tried the usual Option-Return trick, too, which works in apps like iChat, but no go.]
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Add text with line breaks to iTunes' comment box | 8 comments | Create New Account
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Add text with line breaks to iTunes' comment box
Authored by: kokaviel on Dec 08, '06 08:53:26AM

Or if you don't feel like switching to another application entirely... you can use the lyrics tab to cut/paste.



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Add text with line breaks to iTunes' comment box
Authored by: Anonymous on Dec 08, '06 10:33:50AM

Nice. Pity I can't rate this.



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Add text with line breaks to iTunes' comment box
Authored by: steresi on Dec 08, '06 11:01:05AM

This also works for entering "Spotlight Comments" in the Finder (select a file and hit command-I).



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Add text with line breaks to iTunes' comment box
Authored by: billifer on Dec 08, '06 01:41:31PM
For Spotlight Comments field, you can (strangely enough) use Control-Return. As John Gruber proclaimed that "the HIG is dead" at C4, so it seems is keystroke consistency. Option-Return for everything... except Spotlight Comments. Then it's Control-Return. It's mind-boggling to keep up with all the keystroke combinations, especially when they're inconsistent.

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Add text with line breaks to iTunes' comment box
Authored by: fracai on Dec 08, '06 11:42:32AM

Note that line breaks are a pain when dealing with a plain text export of the iTunes library.

In the past I've kept only a subset of my music, mostly online purchases, on my computer with the full library on my iPod. With a new computer purchase with a bigger hard drive I copied the iPod music back over (perhaps a hint to submit on the process I used).

Anyway, I didn't want to lose anything in the transfer and merge so I the plain text export to get a list of all songs in my library, all songs copied from the iPod, and then all songs in the new merged library. I was able to diff the lists as I imported files to ensure nothing was missing.

Anyway again, comments with line breaks cause the plain text exported records to wrap to the next line. There are relatively easy ways to get around this, but I thought it'd be useful to anyone who processes their library as a text file.

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i am jack's amusing sig file



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Add text with line breaks to iTunes' comment box
Authored by: zpjet on Dec 08, '06 04:26:50PM

you could also copy a crlf somewhere else once and then paste it whenever needed.



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Add text with line breaks to iTunes' comment box
Authored by: EmptySet on Dec 09, '06 02:50:00AM

Someone earlier mentioned the Lyrics tab. Not only can you cut and paste from the lyrics tab, you can also use Option+Return there to insert line breaks. Kind of silly to have to jump to that tab first, but it works.



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Add text with line breaks to iTunes' comment box
Authored by: Skurfer on Dec 11, '06 09:56:53AM
[robg adds: I tried the usual Option-Return trick, too, which works in apps like iChat, but no go.]

I'm guessing ⌥↩ is an NSTextView feature and iTunes is unfortunately not a Cocoa app. You could also theoretically hit ⌃Q before hitting ↩ (if it were a Cocoa app).



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