Tag Management

bergpolder
Hi all - just switching to Zotero and so far I've managed to get just about everything out of Mendeley and into Zotero... very happy with one outstanding issue: Tag management!

In short, I have a LOT of tags. There are tags that have crept in from all over the place it seems - random numbers, urls, sentences of confusing text, all sorts... and, of course, my own tags. There's hundreds altogether.

I want to know what the best way is to be able to batch delete some of these (aside of just right clicking the tag and doing 'delete tag' because the interface is a bit slow doing this and I have hundreds to do).

If there is anything like:

- an add-on
- a way to do it in sqlite directly
- a setting I've missed

I'd love to know - again, any help or advice appreciated!

B
  • adamsmith
    The best current way is via the javascript API: https://www.zotero.org/support/dev/client_coding/javascript_api#exampledelete_all_automatic_tags
  • bergpolder
    Thanks for the suggestion!

    I am using standalone on Linux and have decided to use a SQLite browser and do some commands based on:

    https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/4051/remove-all-tags
  • adamsmith
    you'll want to be _very_ careful doing that. It's very easy to shoot your database using sqlite and it's going to be hard to fix.
  • dstillman
    (And note that changes made directly via SQL generally won't sync, if you're using syncing.)
  • Gurdas_Sandhu
    Would this be an appropriate workflow:
    1. Take a full backup of your Zotero data folder.
    2. Play around with SQL until you have achieved the desired state
    3. Scrub the online Zotero library (since it won't show the changes made via SQL)
    4. Re-sync (from local to online)
  • adamsmith
    edited November 15, 2016
    I mean -- it'll probably work for syncing (except that I don't know what you mean by scrubbing the online library. You'd probably do a restore to server -- but that'll still create a mess if you have multiple machines synced), but I'm not going to call it appropriate and if anything goes wrong -- or pretty much if anything sync-related issue comes up in the (long-term) aftermath, I'd imagine that you'd be on your own.

    The appropriate workflow is via the javascript API.
  • janew1
    The javascript API method is more complicated -- and scarier! -- than I'm willing to take on, at least for now. As for editing tags via the local Zotero database, I did that a couple of years ago and it worked fine, but -- as I had been warned -- it really messed up the syncing with my library as backed up at zotero.org.

    I would really like to be able to use tags, but the way they work now it's just impossible. They seem like a potentially very powerful tool. I'm wondering if there are any plans to make the genuinely useful.
  • adamsmith
    I mean -- many people are using tags quite successfully in various ways; it's certainly not impossible, though it may not work for you.
    It may help you to disable automatically imported tags in the general tab of the Zotero preferences (and it may help to hide them, which is an option in the tag selector).
    Beyond that, yes, better batch operations, including for tags, are planned.
  • crabpaws
    edited February 20, 2020
    How do I remove or consolidate tags? What I'm thinking is maybe batch edit of tags?

    Such as: Search on tags in Advanced Search; select items to change; batch edit tags for items; delete unused tags.

    Using current standalone Zotero on Mac OS.
  • XDTZ
    Whenever I import stuff now I always delete all tags using Zutilo: https://github.com/willsALMANJ/Zutilo
    The "No automatic tag" checkbox in the option menu simply does not work for me.
  • dstillman
    The "No automatic tag" checkbox in the option menu simply does not work for me.
    Not sure what you mean by that. If you're referring to "Automatically tag items with keywords and subject headings" in the Zotero preferences, it works in general. If you're seeing automatic tags added somewhere where you don't expect them, start a new thread and provide an example URL.
  • bolejj
    That checkbox is unchecked in my case and I recently ended up with hundreds of tags which completely overran my tagging system. So, in my case that unchecked box simply did not stop autotagging.
    What do you mean by an example URL?
    If this is too hard to fix via a tag managment feature, then how about a DELTE ALL option, then an re-import of your exported tags.
    If there is a plugin that does this then could you post a step by step to run it?
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