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How can I export file comments in Finder to an editable file?

I have a few folders with 100+ files where I wrote important information into the "Get Info" Comments field. Need to export that to an editable file, but there's way too many files to do so manually. I found a post on here but the solution doesn't work for me, potentially because it's offered for Mavericks and I'm running Big Sur.


Any way to automate this?

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 11.6

Posted on Dec 3, 2022 2:04 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Dec 3, 2022 5:24 AM

I would revise this to eliminate everything but the comment text in the output and there are other tweaks that are also possible:


exiftool -q -s3 -if '$MDItemFinderComment' -p '$filename: $MDItemFinderComment' . 2> /dev/null > ~/Desktop/comments.txt


output:

image_rename.csv: I am a CSV file.
foo.jpg: I am an empty image file.


It will not process any file without a Finder comment, suppresses the directory and file totals, and the s3 only writes out the comment itself. Finally the shell redirect 2> ignores exiftool error messages when it encounters an empty file:


Error: File is empty - ./foo.jpg


5 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Dec 3, 2022 5:24 AM in response to Matti Haveri

I would revise this to eliminate everything but the comment text in the output and there are other tweaks that are also possible:


exiftool -q -s3 -if '$MDItemFinderComment' -p '$filename: $MDItemFinderComment' . 2> /dev/null > ~/Desktop/comments.txt


output:

image_rename.csv: I am a CSV file.
foo.jpg: I am an empty image file.


It will not process any file without a Finder comment, suppresses the directory and file totals, and the s3 only writes out the comment itself. Finally the shell redirect 2> ignores exiftool error messages when it encounters an empty file:


Error: File is empty - ./foo.jpg


Dec 22, 2022 12:20 AM in response to VikingOSX

Hi, thank you so much for your answer and sorry for the late reply. I assume this is a command for Terminal? I've never used Terminal very much (or at all, really), is it possible to give a little more detail on how to use the command?


Also I don't know if this is relevant or not, but I've updated to Monterey since I posted this question.

How can I export file comments in Finder to an editable file?

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