Editing object metadata in the Amazon S3 console - Amazon Simple Storage Service

Editing object metadata in the Amazon S3 console

You can use the Amazon S3 console to edit metadata for existing S3 objects by using the Copy action. To edit metadata, you copy objects to the same destination and specify the new metadata you want to apply, which replaces the old metadata for the object. Some metadata is set by Amazon S3 when you upload the object. For example, Content-Length and Last-Modified are system-defined object metadata fields that can't be modified by a user.

You can also set user-defined metadata when you upload the object and replace it as your needs change. For example, you might have a set of objects that you initially store in the STANDARD storage class. Over time, you may no longer need this data to be highly available. So, you can change the storage class to GLACIER by replacing the value of the x-amz-storage-class key from STANDARD to GLACIER.

Note

Consider the following when you are replacing object metadata in Amazon S3:

  • You must specify existing metadata you want to retain, metadata you want to add, and metadata you want to edit.

  • If your object is less than 5 GB, you can use the Copy action in the S3 console to replace object metadata. If your object is greater than 5 GB, you can replace the object metadata when you copy an object with multipart upload by using the AWS CLI or AWS SDKs. For more information, see Copying an object using multipart upload.

  • For a list of additional permissions required to replace metadata, see Required permissions for Amazon S3 API operations. For example policies that grant this permission, see Identity-based policy examples for Amazon S3.

  • This action creates a copy of the object with updated settings and the last-modified date. If S3 Versioning is enabled, a new version of the object is created, and the existing object becomes an older version. If S3 Versioning is not enabled, a new copy of the object replaces the original object. The AWS account associated with the IAM role that changes the property also becomes the owner of the new object or (object version).

  • Editing metadata replaces values for existing key names.

  • Objects that are encrypted with customer-provided encryption keys (SSE-C) cannot be copied using the console. You must use the AWS CLI, AWS SDK, or the Amazon S3 REST API.

Warning

When replacing metadata for folders, wait for the Copy action to finish before adding new objects to the folder. Otherwise, new objects might also be edited.

The following topics describe how to replace metadata for an object by using the Copy action in the Amazon S3 console.

You can replace some system-defined metadata for an S3 object. For a list of system-defined metadata and values that you can modify, see System-defined object metadata.

To replace system-defined metadata of an object

  1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the Amazon S3 console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/s3/.

  2. In the navigation pane, choose Buckets, and then choose the General purpose buckets or Directory buckets tab. Navigate to the Amazon S3 bucket or folder that contains the objects you want to change.

  3. Select the check box for the objects you want to change.

  4. On the Actions menu, choose Copy from the list of options that appears.

  5. To specify the destination path, choose Browse S3, navigate to the same destination as the source objects, and select the destination check box. Choose Choose destination in the lower-right corner.

    Alternatively, enter the destination path.

  6. If you do not have bucket versioning enabled, you will see a warning recommending you enable Bucket Versioning to help protect against unintentionally overwriting or deleting objects. If you want to keep all versions of objects in this bucket, select Enable Bucket Versioning. You can also view the default encryption and Object Lock properties in Destination details.

  7. Under Additional copy settings, choose Specify settings to specify settings for Metadata.

  8. Scroll to the Metadata section, and then choose Replace all metadata.

  9. Choose Add metadata.

  10. For metadata Type, select System-defined.

  11. Specify a unique Key and the metadata Value.

  12. To edit additional metadata, choose Add metadata. You can also choose Remove to remove a set of type-key-values.

  13. Choose Copy. Amazon S3 saves your metadata changes.

You can replace user-defined metadata of an object by combining the metadata prefix, x-amz-meta-, and a name you choose to create a custom key. For example, if you add the custom name alt-name, the metadata key would be x-amz-meta-alt-name.

User-defined metadata can be as large as 2 KB total. To calculate the total size of user-defined metadata, sum the number of bytes in the UTF-8 encoding for each key and value. Both keys and their values must conform to US-ASCII standards. For more information, see User-defined object metadata.

To replace user-defined metadata of an object

  1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the Amazon S3 console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/s3/.

  2. In the navigation pane, choose Buckets, and then choose the General purpose buckets or Directory buckets tab. Navigate to the Amazon S3 bucket or folder that contains the objects you want to change.

  3. Select the check box for the objects you want to change.

  4. On the Actions menu, choose Copy from the list of options that appears.

  5. To specify the destination path, choose Browse S3, navigate to the same destination as the source objects, and select the destination check box. Choose Choose destination.

    Alternatively, enter the destination path.

  6. If you do not have bucket versioning enabled, you will see a warning recommending you enable Bucket Versioning to help protect against unintentionally overwriting or deleting objects. If you want to keep all versions of objects in this bucket, select Enable Bucket Versioning. You can also view the default encryption and Object Lock properties in Destination details.

  7. Under Additional copy settings, choose Specify settings to specify settings for Metadata.

  8. Scroll to the Metadata section, and then choose Replace all metadata.

  9. Choose Add metadata.

  10. For metadata Type, choose User-defined.

  11. Enter a unique custom Key following x-amz-meta-. Also enter a metadata Value.

  12. To add additional metadata, choose Add metadata. You can also choose Remove to remove a set of type-key-values.

  13. Choose Copy. Amazon S3 saves your metadata changes.