Thank you very much for the responses to my query. The copyright tag is now added correctly but I s +till cannot append the Lens ID using "+<". It simply overwrites the previous values. I find that I + do not need to use "+=" for the keywords, they are all added fine with the syntax shown below as +long as the line containing $lensid is absent. When it is present the previous values are overwrit +ten. Anyway, I have another way around this in the script I'm preparing but this would be more ele +gant than my hack. -keywords=this is the test1 -keywords=six.point.three test2 -keywords=test3 -keywords=test32 -keywords+<$lensid -d %Y -copyright<Copyright $createdate, Patrick J. Finerty, Jr. -xmp:city=Toronto -xmp:location=hell on earth -xmp:country=Canada -xmp:reuseallowed=No