I'll just delete tags by hand if and when they reappear. I have turned off the automatic tagging preference, so that should slow the addition of new tags. It's only clutter anyway; they will not prevent my private tagging scheme from working unless some library happens to hit upon the same tag, which is very unlikely.
Thanks for your attention, and I look forward to future improvements that can delete multiple tags :-)
To be clear, if you have the automatic-tags pref off, they shouldn’t show up unexpectedly, and you should report it in a new thread if they do. They’ll show up for a file import, where we treat everything as a manual tag (though that might be an import-time option in the future). Until recently, there was a bug where imports by ISBN in Add Item by Identifier didn’t obey the pref. And they might be added if you save directly to your online library from the Zotero Connector. I can’t think of anything else.
I can't really tell where they came from. I have being using Zotero for years without paying any attention to tags, but now I wanted to try a few things out - which is working well by the way.
FYI, I am setting tags as field-value pairs to indicate which library has a book, e.g. "AVAILABILITY = EML" [Edinburgh University Main Library]; whether I want to borrow it, buy it, read it or whatever, e.g. STATUS = borrow; and its priority for me e.g. PRIORITY = 5. So when I visit my library I can set up a search to show me which books I want to borrow at that library with the highest priority. I use attached notes for the shelf numbers. All I need now is a way of sorting the shelf numbers so I can plot the shortest route around the library! When I borrow them I change the status to STATUS = read ... and so on. in other words, tailored workflow control.
It would by nice to be able to get rid of the clutter of all the tags that I did not make, but I guess I'll delete a few by hand when the mood takes me and otherwise put up with them until you make the necessary improvements.
Especially where we have selected articles for a specific tag. I was reviewing a subcollection. I clicked on the tag window to show articles with to-read associated with them. This showed a specific collection. I reviewed them and instead of being able to remove the common tag associated with these articles (the to-read tag), I had to individually select each article and remove the tag.
@narathc: You can already remove a tag from multiple items at once by holding down Cmd (Mac) or Shift (Windows/Linux) while dragging the items to a tag in the tag selector. If you've assigned a color to the tag (which is common for "to read"), you can also just press the associated number key on the keyboard.
1. Install Zutilo 2. In Zotero advanced search, conduct a search for tags containing a latter "a". Save that search 3. In the saved search folder, select all items and right-click "remove tags".
4. repeat step (2) but not for another letter say "e" (consonants are more likely to exist in words, so search for those). Repeat until you are clean of all tags.
It´s quite obvious that tags continue to be a real issue, from newcomers to old users. A "delete all tags" and/or "delete all user-based tags" will be super useful. I don´t know why but Zutilo is not working taking into account my user-based tags (my DB has ~15000 citations). Cheers.
@adeldaoud1, this is the most straightforward solution, saved me hours. Many thanks! Two additions:
1) the 'Remove tags' option needs to be manually activated in the Tools > Zutilo Preferences... > 'Remove tags': activate 'Zutilo context menu', and
2) You can skip step 2.–4. and instead just highlight your entire library (ctrl+a) and right click 'remove tags'. Note: this might take a while depending on number of entries and tags.
Hmm, I became hopeful after reading this discussion, but...What do I do wrong?
I have activated remove tags as was adviced, still I can't remove all automatically generated tags. I can't highlight my entire library either actually...Could someone help me out please?
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I'll just delete tags by hand if and when they reappear. I have turned off the automatic tagging preference, so that should slow the addition of new tags. It's only clutter anyway; they will not prevent my private tagging scheme from working unless some library happens to hit upon the same tag, which is very unlikely.
Thanks for your attention, and I look forward to future improvements that can delete multiple tags :-)
FYI, I am setting tags as field-value pairs to indicate which library has a book, e.g. "AVAILABILITY = EML" [Edinburgh University Main Library]; whether I want to borrow it, buy it, read it or whatever, e.g. STATUS = borrow; and its priority for me e.g. PRIORITY = 5. So when I visit my library I can set up a search to show me which books I want to borrow at that library with the highest priority. I use attached notes for the shelf numbers. All I need now is a way of sorting the shelf numbers so I can plot the shortest route around the library! When I borrow them I change the status to STATUS = read ... and so on. in other words, tailored workflow control.
It would by nice to be able to get rid of the clutter of all the tags that I did not make, but I guess I'll delete a few by hand when the mood takes me and otherwise put up with them until you make the necessary improvements.
Especially where we have selected articles for a specific tag. I was reviewing a subcollection. I clicked on the tag window to show articles with to-read associated with them. This showed a specific collection. I reviewed them and instead of being able to remove the common tag associated with these articles (the to-read tag), I had to individually select each article and remove the tag.
https://www.zotero.org/support/collections_and_tags#removing_tags_from_items
1. Install Zutilo
2. In Zotero advanced search, conduct a search for tags containing a latter "a". Save that search
3. In the saved search folder, select all items and right-click "remove tags".
4. repeat step (2) but not for another letter say "e" (consonants are more likely to exist in words, so search for those). Repeat until you are clean of all tags.
1) the 'Remove tags' option needs to be manually activated in the Tools > Zutilo Preferences... > 'Remove tags': activate 'Zutilo context menu', and
2) You can skip step 2.–4. and instead just highlight your entire library (ctrl+a) and right click 'remove tags'. Note: this might take a while depending on number of entries and tags.
I have activated remove tags as was adviced, still I can't remove all automatically generated tags. I can't highlight my entire library either actually...Could someone help me out please?
https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/110559/how-to-delete-tags-in-bulk#latest