All + Symbols Were Changed in File Explorer

[hiccup]

I still find this confusing and difficult to grasp.

Back to some basics:
Are you saying that MusicBee is changing file names differently from how you have setup your renaming template for that, and as a result these songs are not recognised by MusicBee anymore?

If so, are you able to provide a specific example of that happening that can be repeated, tested and verified by others?

[smann]

I still find this confusing and difficult to grasp.

Back to some basics:
Are you saying that MusicBee is changing file names differently from how you have setup your renaming template for that, and as a result these songs are not recognised by MusicBee anymore?

If so, are you able to provide a specific example of that happening that can be repeated, tested and verified by others?

I'm saying that suddenly all band names, album names, and song names with a "+" symbol in the name had the actual filename changed without changing the track name in Musicbee which broke the link so they were shown as missing. Adding the "+" symbols back into the actual filenames fixed it, but not sure what initially caused the problem as I haven't made changes to the library or program since early February and it seems to have happened March 6. I pull it up periodically, but nothing has been added or changed since February. I don't know if it was Musicbee specifically that caused this, but a lot points to it: I haven't touched anything since well before the occurrence, I haven't changed the naming template in years and it has worked fine, only happened to files in the linked music library and nowhere else, and Musicbee is set to auto-organize. It hasn't happened again and seems to be a randomly odd happenstance. I was just more wondering if anyone has ever had this happen and maybe if someone knew of a cause, maybe a change Steve made in programming that might have set it off (maybe "+" got added as some delimiter somewhere that can break the auto-organize, I don't know). Luckily it was easily fixable, but it did give a good scare when hundreds of songs suddenly couldn't be found due to a single symbol in the name. I also checked the ignored symbols to see if maybe that's what set it off, but I don't have "+" in there.

[phred]

Clarification please...

You originally had the plus sign (+) as the first character of the file name?
Or as the first character in a tag?
Or anywhere in a tag?
And while the tag remained unchanged you woke up one morning and the file name was changed to have a plus sign as the first character?
And nothing else was changed?

If the plus sign was in a tag, please show us a screenshot from the Tag Editor showing a tag with the plus sign.

<Shaking head as this really doesn't make any sense. Nor does it seem possible.)

[smann]

Clarification please...

You originally had the plus sign (+) as the first character of the file name?
Or as the first character in a tag?
Or anywhere in a tag?
And while the tag remained unchanged you woke up one morning and the file name was changed to have a plus sign as the first character?
And nothing else was changed?

If the plus sign was in a tag, please show us a screenshot from the Tag Editor showing a tag with the plus sign.

<Shaking head as this really doesn't make any sense. Nor does it seem possible.)

I agree, it was so random and out of left field after many years of no problems whatsoever.

The only interaction since adding the last album to Musicbee on February 1 (no error then) was updating to Version 3.6.9143, as I update periodically, but nothing else. And I remembered when I updated I restarted the app and verified no messages popped up or anything out of the ordinary and then closed out. Not sure what specific date I updated though. The issue appears to have show up on March 6.
 
The + was anywhere in the filename... artist title, album name, or song name.

+44 was moved to 144 (the only one to not replace + with a single space and instead a 1, also the only one with the + at the beginning of the name that I can find, so might be something there)... and the rest (albums and song names) had the + changed to a single space. All shown in the example pics I attached before.

So to recap: I added an album on February 1, the changes according to my daily backups apparently happened on March 6, I updated sometime after February 1 (not sure on timeframe), then on March 22 when opening the app it told me there were a bunch of missing files and I noticed quickly that all of them involved the symbol of "+", which prompted the question because it was really odd.

This is what has always been in Musicbee for years now: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FubBnIZiGmc_j3uC_G_r-fqPNT_Mhujr/view?usp=sharing

Opened it up to see that included as a missing file and found it now under 144 instead of +44. Changing it back fixed the link.

[MotleyG]

Are you absolutely certain you don't have anything set up in the Filename Character Mapping window when using the auto-renaming option?
https://musicbee.fandom.com/wiki/File_Organization#Filename_Character_Mapping

Since the "+" character is valid in Windows filenames it isn't MS doing this by any default method.

[smann]

Are you absolutely certain you don't have anything set up in the Filename Character Mapping window when using the auto-renaming option?
https://musicbee.fandom.com/wiki/File_Organization#Filename_Character_Mapping

Since the "+" character is valid in Windows filenames it isn't MS doing this by any default method.

Yes, I've had this setup since like 2015 haha. My mapping hasn't changed except adding the custom tags for Set Subtitle and Sort Set Subtitle (described before and has nothing to do with this) in about 2018 or so. No changes since and it has worked the whole time. I also want to point out, none of those files were recently added, so the naming mapping shouldn't even be a factor.

Also the mapping has no "+" renaming: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uYBfYbqv4mkL9WXZAEIikZkfJq--gjpI/view?usp=sharing

[MotleyG]

Sorry I can't think of anything else to investigate here. Short of a 3rd party app for renaming, nothing from MB or Win "should" be making this change.

[smann]

Sorry I can't think of anything else to investigate here. Short of a 3rd party app for renaming, nothing from MB or Win "should" be making this change.

Exactly, I'm so confused! I just use Musicbee on Windows and let Windows do as little as possible for everything.

The only thing I can think of is the auto-organizing feature, and maybe Version 3.6.9143 or around there introduced the "+" symbol as a specified delimiter or something of actual consequence that put it off limits and affected this. Maybe? But checking the forum, I see no indication from Steve that this was a problem that was corrected later (which he's great at fixing things very quickly), and I seem to be the only one with the issue, but with no program interaction at the time (unless maybe an update at that time). So again, I'm very confused.

[phred]

maybe Version 3.6.9143 or around there introduced the "+" symbol as a specified delimiter or something of actual consequence that put it off limits and affected this.

I would be extremely shocked and surprised if this was introduced as a delimiter. Steven certainly would've mentioned it.

So since this is hurting my head, I'll sit back and watch to see if it ever gets resolved.

[Steven]

One common reason for unexpected behaviour is if you have an ASR rule enabled in the Tag Tools  plugin that automatically applies updates

[voodoopunk]

maybe Version 3.6.9143 or around there introduced the "+" symbol as a specified delimiter or something of actual consequence that put it off limits and affected this.

I would be extremely shocked and surprised if this was introduced as a delimiter. Steven certainly would've mentioned it.

So since this is hurting my head, I'll sit back and watch to see if it ever gets resolved.

This couldn't have happened, as I own the same album and have no problems with it. Also the track Puke + Cry by Dinosaur Jr. would have gone bandy. Neither shows any issues here.

Also, I'll mention again, make sure you haven't still got WMP installed/activated. I've not heard of it doing anything quite like this, but wouldn't rule it out.

[smann]

I've found this issue. I'm not sure what happened to the original files, but OneDrive apparently can't backup (sorry sync because they won't put in a true backup option) the + symbols in filenames. It's also backing up +44 as 144, maybe since the + is at the beginning of the filename and it can't put a space there, so it falls back to a 1 instead. Freaking Microsoft always screwing things up. I honestly have no clue whatsoever on where the original files with the correct naming for these went though as I haven't restored from OneDrive or interacted with it in quite a while, and my files are stored on my laptop.