Deleting Multiple Tags?

jennkbergen
I just imported several folders to Zotero and it imported all kinds of weird tags (even though I had this option unchecked). Even after I clicked "Delete Automatic Tags in this Library" there were still thousands of tags left. Is there a way to mass-delete these? I don't want any of them and would prefer to start from scratch with my own.
  • dstillman
    Tags that come from file imports aren't considered automatic tags, because most of the data exchange formats don't distinguish between different types of tags/keywords.

    The Zutilo plugin can remove all tags from selected items. (A future version of Zotero will include that capability as a built-in feature.)
  • isabelleheadrick
    Follow up: I want to clean out my enormous list of tags without having to go to each item to which the tags are attached. Is there a way to bulk-delete many of tags themselves?
  • qqbb
    https://www.zotero.org/support/collections_and_tags#removing_tags_from_items
    You can also hold Cmd (Mac) or Shift (Windows/Linux) while dragging items to a tag in the tag selector in the bottom left to remove the tag from all of those items.
    You can also right-click a tag in the tag selector to delete it completely.
  • elgayaro
    @dstillman is Zutilo functionality incorporated in the latest version of Zotero?

    It is not clear how best to delete multiple tags in bulk/batches.
  • SebSobecki
    This remains the single biggest issue with Zotero after well over a decade: neither Zotero nor any of the existing Zotero add-ons can batch-delete multiple tags from a library. This issue is a frequent problem when migrating to Zotero from other citation managers. Just to make clear, this is not about removing all tags from multiple entries, it's simply about the ability to select multiple tags in the Tag Selector and delete them completely from the entire library. Users may wish to keep certain tags but delete others. Large libraries will come with thousands of tags; deleting them manually isn't feasible.
  • SebSobecki
    Ok, this is a workaround, cumbersome but not entirely mad, for those of you who migrate to Zotero with a library packed with thousands of unwanted tags but several that you'd like to keep.
    1. Install Zutilo
    2. Assuming that the tags you'd like to keep are not in their hundreds, select each tag you'd like to keep, and move all the items with that tag into a new collection, named after your tag. Repeat for each tag you'd like to keep.
    3. Use Zutilo to delete all tags from your library
    4. In each of your new collections select all the items and assign a new tag named after that collection. Since items can be multiple collections, they will also receive multiple tags.
    5. Delete the new collections you created in step 2.
    6. Problem solved!
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