Click on Tools to see Auto-Numbering.
I know what follows looks long, but once you get the hang of it, it’s very quick and painless.
The Fuze lists Album, Artist, Song (Title) from the tags. Whatever is in Album is what the Sansa is going to display as the album title. Not the folder name. It’s the electronic labels, the ID3 tags, that show on the Fuze listings.
You can change any tag you want in mp3tag–and change an entire album all at once so it’s consistent.
Open the album with mp3tag. Highlight all the files. On the left pane of mp3tag, you will see Title, Artist, Album, Year, etc. and, lower down, Album Artist. (Album Artist is for albums like a soundtrack, with multiple artists, while Artist is who performed each track. You can ignore Album Artist. The Fuze lists Artist from the Artist tag.)
With the files highlighted, when the tags are all the same throughout the album, you’ll see what that consistent label is–like the Album title, since all the tracks are on the same album. I expect you’ll see the whole “Ultimate Collection” mouthful there, which is where the Fuze is getting it.
Meanwhile, if you see <keep>, that means that what’s in the field changes for the multiple tracks you have highlighted. So of course Title (song title) will say <keep> because each song has a different title.
Because that Ben E. King album is a compilation, the people who tagged it gave you too much information–listing all the different groups he was in: the Drifters, etc.
So you’ll see <keep> in Artist.
When you see <keep>, you can click it and see in a drop-down menu what all the various Artist designations are. You can pick one–like Ben E. King–or just type in whatever you want. Then (under File) Save tags. Now Artist reads Ben E. King for all the tracks. And if you want to shorten the title in Album, go ahead: With all the tracks highlighted, type it in and Save. It’s your music.
Make sure you are re-tagging the copy of the album that’s on your Fuze–or drag-and-drop it off the Fuze onto your desktop (or anywhere you want), fix the tags, and send it back. (I’ve done some lovely re-tagging myself on the copy in my computer, then forgotten to transfer it…)
Think of the system as a catalog. Windows Explorer is actually pretty stupid–all it can see is one name (a folder, a file, etc.) alphabetically. All the folders in Windows, in effect, have just one label that Windows can read.
But with tags, every file has more than one label. It’s labeled by Album, Artist, (song) Title, etc. And by reading the tags, the Fuze can sort them all those different ways for you. But of course, the tags have to be usable first.
Meanwhile, if you do want to navigate via folders and filenames like Windows Explorer, you can do that. Under Music, the last choice should be Folders. Click on it and you can go through them as you would in Windows Explorer.
If you don’t see Folders as a choice under Music–scroll all the way down the list, there’s more than one screenful–then you need to update the firmware. There are instructions near the top of the forum. Don’t install Sansa Updater, which will try to phone home every time you connect. Just do the manual installation–download software, drag it into the Fuze, and disconnect (follow the more detailed directions).
You shouldn’t have to uninstall WMP 10 to install WMP 11. Your son can right-click on Help to see Check for Updates and try to do it that way–or, if Help isn’t visible, right-click on the very top of the window to see Help, click Help, etc.–or just leave it as is if it’s working. Every Windows Media Player just gets more bloated, and if 10 is working, I’d leave it alone.
