Import/Export > Desktop Import/Export > Formatting File Names

File Name Formatting

Default Metadata

If you do not specify a value for a document's class, subclass, author, operator, or owner field either manually or via a CSV, Desktop Import will use the values specified in the following settings. For all fields, clicking the ... button will bring up a dialog that allows you to select a value from those that are available in the WorkSite database.

Metadata	Default Value
Default Document-Class	Previously used class or none
Sub Class	None
Author	Logged in user
Operator	Logged in user
Owner	Logged in user

Advanced Formatting

The Advanced Formatting dialog provides the following two options.

Option

Description

Format File Name

Remove either non-alphabetic or numeric characters from the beginning or end of all folder and document names.

Split Document Name

Parse file names for metadata values and automatically assign them to the appropriate fields.

Option	Description
Use Index	Specify a starting position and length for each section.
Use Delimiter	Automatically split the file name every time a specified character appears.
Use Custom Key Word	Specify a pattern that identifies values split by one or more characters.

Splitting Document Names

Use Index

To parse fixed-length metadata from file names:

Select Use Index. The preview pane appears on the right-had side of the dialog.
In first row of the preview table under From, specify the position of the first character in the section. Character positions, i.e.,indexes are zero-based, so a section that includes the first character should have a From value of 0.
In the Length column, specify the number of characters to include in the section.
Repeat steps two and three for each metadata value that you'd like to parse from the file name.
Click OK to apply the parsed metadata to the documents.

Example

Sample File Name	From	Length	Result
Test Folder	0	4	Test
Test Document 1.docx	0	6	Test D

Use Delimiter

Example

File Name	Delimiter	Result
File_Name	_	File
File_Name	_	Name
File. Name	.	File
File. Name	.	Name

Use Custom Key Word

This option allows a user to input a format or pattern using keywords that can be used to optionally extract metadata. The keywords are wrapped in “|”. To separate a folder path from a document name, a trailing “\” should be used. The keyword could be any string of your choice but the pattern specified should be consistent with the file name.

Sample File Name	Current Format	Output Format	Result
D:\FOLDER\SUBFOLDER\Test.docx	\|part1\|:\|part2\|\\|part3\|\\|part4\|.\|part5\|	\|part1\|	D:
		\|part2\|	\FOLDER
		\|part3\|	SUBFOLDER
		\|part4\|	Test
		\|part5\|	docx
D:\Style Guidelines\Test 12345 1.docx	\|path\|\\|document name\|\|document number\| \|version\|.\|extension\|	\|path\|	D:\Style Guidelines\
		\|document name\|	Test
		\|document number\|	12345
		\|version\|	1
		\|extension\|	docx