Adding text to existing captions as a batch edit

[Stig Ove Voll]

I have hundreds of photos with their own unique captions, and I want to ADD an identical line of text to each of the captions. Is this possible as a batch edit?

Like this: [Existing caption] + [New line of text].

[Michael J. Hoffman]

Lightroom doesn't have this kind of capability, but it sounds like a job for Exiftool. With exiftool, you could send a folder or multiple folders full of files to be modified at a time, using a command line something like:

exiftool -P -IPTC:Caption-Abstract+="additional text…" *.jpg

(-P preserves the creation date, and += appends new data onto existing data). 

I'm not a user of Exiftool, perhaps someone who is could help further. I've just read and noted its capabilities, and see that it's quite powerful for tasks like this one. 

https://exiftool.org/

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

I believe plugins by John R Ellis or John Beardsworth offer this type of functionality inside of Lightroom. 

http://www.beardsworth.co.uk/lightroom/

https://johnrellis.com/lightroom/allplugins.htm 

[john beardsworth · Accepted solution]

If you select a bunch of images and have <Mixed> in the caption, type your texr after it. This appends your text.

As Rikk mentioned, I do a plugin called Search and Replace which does more sophisticated text replacement (eg replacing a word anywhere in the caption).

[Stig Ove Voll]

Splendid! Thank you so much!

[Michael J. Hoffman]

John, that's excellent. I had no idea you could used <Mixed> as a token and just append text to it! Thanks for the tip!

[Bob Somrak]

@john beardsworth 

Thanks for the great tip John.  I tested this and this works in the Title and User Comment fields too!!!

[john beardsworth]

It's a good one, isn't it? I've no idea how long it's been possible, probably from LR's earliest days, but I remember kicking myself when I found it much later.

[Bob Somrak]

@john beardsworth 

I played with this some more and you can add text, even at the same time,  BEFORE and AFTER the <Mixed>  token.  What a great tip.  Well done!!