# The Editing State

By default, whenever you change the file selection, a new editing state is established. The editing portion of the main window will change to reflect the contents of the file or files that have been selected. This editing state will persist until a different file selection occurs, the files are saved, or the files are refreshed. You can undo changes to back the editing state or manually update the saved editing state contents.

The Edit menu's Revert to Editing State will restore the metadata in the current file selection to the metadata snapshot automatically taken when the selection was made (or manually saved).

The Edit menu's Update Editing State command will manually take a new snapshot of the metadata. You can even do this when an action is running and is paused to display a prompt.

If you wish you can manually control the setting and clearing of the editing state by setting the Preferences- File List - Preserve Editing State setting. When the option is set, an editing state is automatically set when a file is selected and it has not already had an editing state set. Further, the editing state is never automatically cleared.

You can also set the Preferences- File List - Set Editing state before running an action setting. As the name implies, this option will cause the automatic setting of the editing state prior to running an action in the UI (ie. not via the Batch Processor).