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The title.dat configuration defines the titles the buyer can choose from when entering their billing address and an alternative delivery address. It also determines how the selected title later appears in the salutation line. Konfig Titel
You define the form of the salutation itself in the salutation.dat configuration. That is also where you determine whether the title appears in the salutation line at all.
Reference: salutation.dat configuration · Guide: Defining how salutations and titles are formed, Selection lists for address data · Basics: Configuration basics

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Where the file is located

The shop looks for the file in two locations, in this order:
The subshop’s file takes precedence. If it is missing, the shop falls back to the shared file one level up.
One of the two files must exist, and the file found must not be empty. Otherwise, the shop aborts with an error message.Note one difference from salutation.dat: an empty file in the subshop directory does not trigger a fallback to the shared file for title.dat, but leads directly to an abort. So delete the file in the subshop directory entirely instead of emptying its content.

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Structure

The file is tab-separated. The first row contains the column names, and from the second row on, each title has its own row.
Columns are identified by their names in the header row, not by their position. This means the column order is up to you, but the spelling of the names is not. The shop does not evaluate more than ten columns.The module for forms and inquiries aborts with a warning if one of the five columns is missing from the header row.

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Title and Text are not the same

This is the point where this file is most often misunderstood. Title is the written form for the selection list and for the address data. Text is the spoken form for the salutation line. The $W-Title placeholder in salutation.dat is replaced by the content of the Text column, not by Title. This lets you cleanly separate long academic titles:

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The first entry

The second row of the file, that is, the first data entry, is intended for buyers who have no title or do not want to provide one. Its Title column stays empty so that the selection list starts with an empty entry.
For this empty entry, the shop prefixes the title code in the form value with empty_, for example empty_00. It removes the prefix again during evaluation.

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The title code

The title code must remain the same across all country codes. If “Rechtsanwalt” uses code $1 in the German shop, then “Advocate” must use the same code $1 in the English shop. The reason lies in further processing: the code is stored, not the text. Only if the code has the same meaning across all languages can first name and title be validated correctly later and a matching salutation be generated.
The code is free text. The dollar sign is a convention, not a requirement, and the shop compares the code case-insensitively.

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Example

A title.dat for German and English, showing the German block here. The first data row is the entry without a title.
In this example, there is a 0 in several places where the column description refers to an empty cell. This notation is taken unchanged from the previous documentation.When you create a new title.dat, leave these cells empty if in doubt. Leave an existing file with 0 unchanged as long as the salutation lines in the shop look correct.

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The salutation line

You define how the title ends up in the salutation line in salutation.dat via the CompleteSalutation column. This file contributes two things: The Text column provides the content for the $W-Title placeholder. The LastNameInSalutation column decides whether the $W-LastName placeholder is filled with the last name or left empty. This applies even if salutation.dat includes the placeholder. A title can therefore suppress the last name in the salutation.
After inserting the placeholders, the shop collapses double spaces and removes a trailing space. A suppressed title or last name therefore does not leave a gap in the salutation line.
Reference: salutation.dat configuration
You set the language your shop uses in the Basic section of the shop.config.
Reference: shop.config, basics and technology

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Changes to the title list

The shop reads the file once per request. Changes therefore take effect with the next page request. A row you remove disappears from the selection list. For addresses that have already stored the corresponding title code, the shop then no longer finds a matching entry and outputs neither the title nor the title text. It is therefore best to change only the text and delete only rows whose code was never in use.