Edit Article

How to Edit Metadata

The general type of information known as metadata comes in many different varieties, each with their own structures, protocols and formats. If you are trying to edit some sort of metadata for any reason, you may be able to benefit from some of the most common methods for changing this sort of data. Experts define metadata as "data about data." It is essentially a type of information that describes an object, which can be a piece of data such as a story or text file, a picture or image, or some other kind of item. Here are some of the steps that individuals need to take in order to edit metadata effectively.

Steps

  1. 1
    Understand metadata conventions. Each type of metadata has its own unique conventions and rules. Metadata elements also have specific formats, like key fields for text files, XMP (Extensible Metadata Platform) or Exif (Exchangeable image file format) formats for visuals, and other sorts of common presentations. Knowing more about these will help you use metadata the right way.
  2. 2
    Access metadata. In order to edit or change metadata, you will need to make sure that you have access to it. This can mean having the right administrative clearance, having network connections to where files are kept, or even just knowing how to unlock compressed folders or restricted formats.
    • Get your clearance, orienting file directions and passwords. For some common kinds of jobs editing metadata, individuals will need specific access. For example, to edit text page metadata in a content management system (CMS) like Joomla, you will need to have the right password to access the web site's back end. Staffers who are ordered to edit metadata will need these virtual keys from management before editing can take place.
  3. 3
    Locate metadata tags. For web page metadata, which is one of the most commonly edited kinds, you will need to find the right amending tags for the data, usually in the margins of the page that shows the core web page content.
  4. 4
    Rewrite metadata. When you have located the actual text or icon metadata, click into the fields and edit as needed.
  5. 5
    Save or apply changes. This step is critical to making any edits to metadata. Most data handling programs require specific save commands in order to preserve any edits that a user does while in the system. Disregard this rule, and you may find that your changes are simply not saved.

Community Q&A

Search
Add New Question
  • Question
    If the metadata of a Word document has been edited, is it possible to identify that this has been done?
    wikiHow Contributor
    Community Answer
    Yes, using the review tab in the ribbon, choose "Compare original documents." From the drop down list of documents, choose the original and current documents in the pop-up dialog. This opens a right-side bar with scrolling controls to review both documents stacked one above the other in the upper and lower frames.
Ask a Question
200 characters left
Include your email address to get a message when this question is answered.
Submit

    Tips

    • Edit metadata according to specific goals and objectives. Going into a file with the intention to edit metadata generally may not be enough to provide you with the right focus. Figure out why metadata needs to be changed, and exactly what you will use to populate metadata fields, and you'll be closer to making these changes quickly.

    Article Info

    Categories: HTML

    Thanks to all authors for creating a page that has been read 47,650 times.

    Is this article up to date?
     
https://www.wikihow.com/Edit-Metadata
www.wikihow.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2018-39
200382
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:AUAEWDUJLXMO6LT4VWLQRRVWKKSR23R5
<urn:uuid:39f14e10-c6a0-489e-874a-44399e34d584>
2018-09-21T10:21:57Z
151.101.202.110
application/xhtml+xml
sha1:5DVQKKS66ZP6SQNIMPZZUOS3EPENQER6
<urn:uuid:c1f83431-c00e-4aae-a48b-c3ec0fe8508f>
https://www.wikihow.com/Edit-Metadata
response
<urn:uuid:5203805e-b5e1-4351-ae21-2ab35da1cd9f>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2018-39
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for September 2018
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-111-168-72.ec2.internal
software: Apache Nutch 1.15 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 0.11-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: http://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/