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Consolidate History Tool

Watch the Dupin Consolidate History Tool video.

The Consolidate History feature is a powerful tool to assist with managing your duplicate tracks. Because it writes new tag data to your iTunes tracks immediately its affects cannot be un-done. Be sure you understand how consolidation works before using it.

You can consolidate some of the tag data from among the tracks in a Dupe Group and apply that data to the one Keeper track in the Dupe Group. In order to use the Consolidate History feature a single Keeper for a Dupe Group must already have been selected, either manually by toggling tracks' checkboxes or automatically with the Filter Controls. Running Consolidate History on a Dupe Group with more than one designated Keeper or no designated Keeper will have no effect.

Consolidate History can be applied to a single Dupe Group, all Dupe Groups, or selected Dupe Groups. These options are explained below.

Specifically, you can consolidate the data from these tags:

An example

Let's say a Dupe Group contains two versions of a song. One version has:

The second version has

If you were to Consolidate History on this Dupe Group, whichever track had been designated as the Keeper could be tagged with:

(Average Rating is computed like so: Sum of Ratings of Tracks in Dupe Group/Number of Tracks in Dupe Group. As such, an average will consider tracks with no Rating.)

Note: By default Keepers are designated by being checkmarked. However, if you prefer the opposite configuration whereby a Keeper is designated by being un-checkmarked, you can toggle this behavior in Preferences. In any case, the text color of non-Keepers is always lighter than the text color of the Keepers. Throughout this help book, tracks will be referred to as Keepers and non-Keepers as often as possible to avoid any confusion with what is "checked" or "un-checked".

Consolidate History: Single Selected Dupe Group

A single Dupe Group can have its Keeper track supplied with a Consolidated History. Right-click any track of a Dupe Group has a single designated Keeper track to activate the contextual menu. Select "Consolidate History..." from the contextual menu.

The Consolidate History window will appear:

Consolidate History

Click the checkboxes to enter a checkmark and indicate that you wish to apply the respective info to the Keeper track. Select which Rating (high, low or average) you wish to use from the Rating popup. When the settings are to your liking click the "Apply Now" button.

Notes:

Consolidate History: All Dupe Groups/Selected Dupe Groups

You can Consolidate History on all the Dupe Groups that have a single designated Keeper.

The one caveat to this feature is that, unlike the single Consolidate History technique described above, when you Consolidate History on more than one Dupe Group you cannot know the specific data that is being assigned to each Keeper track.

Make sure you have designated a single Keeper track for the Dupe Groups, either manually by toggling tracks' checkboxes or automatically with the Filter Controls. Any Dupe Group with more than one designated Keeper or no designated Keeper will be ignored.

Choose "Consolidate History..." from the Tools menu OR press Shift-Command-H shortcut OR select the "Consolidate" toolbar item (if you have assigned it to the toolbar). The Consolidate History window will appear:

Consolidate History

Click the checkboxes to enter a checkmark and indicate that you wish to apply the respective info to the Keeper tracks. Select which Rating (high, low or average) you wish to use from the Rating popup. When the settings are to your liking click the "Apply Now" button.

Consolidate History: Selected Dupe Groups

Running Consolidate History on a selection of tracks works just like the technique described above except that only the Dupe Groups within a selection of tracks will be affected.

Notes:

See also

bullet Basic Operations
bullet Other Tasks and Commands