deleting a large number of tags efficiently
I inadvertently created a lot of tags (probably hundreds). Deleting them in the tag window is very time consuming as it has to be done 1-by-1 and each deletion takes several seconds. Any suggestions on doing this more efficiently for a 1-time deal. Is there a reindex option or something that would delete all unused tags?
(Edit: Ah, I see that I misinterpreted the problem.)
If you're comfortable with SQL and some scripting language like Python or Perl, you should be able to build a small program to perform the tag deletes directly in the database (after making a backup copy of all your data for safety). But that route is not for the faint-hearted, not without risks, and probably not something you want to try if you're not already comfortable with the languages involved.
So now I have a lot of tags that show up "greyed out" when I select "Display all tags in this library" that are artifacts of that process. There are no longer any references associated with these tags, but they're still there. Deleting each one requires takes seconds in Zotero (and it looks like a big disk I/O activity). There are hundreds, so it's rather time consuming to clean it up. And I'm bothering to clean it up because I think it's making Zotero sluggish to maintain this huge inventory of unused tags.
But I am groping in the dark here, so would welcome insight from a more knowledgeable source.
Now I have 34,000 items in my trash. Would emptying the trash make the unused tags go away?
Usually they are purged, but I have some that won't go away. I am absolutely certain they aren't associated with anything, and are dimmed when I select My Library. Advice appreciated
Have tried rebooting system too
Isis
But still a bit odd (to me) that even when the trash is empty I need to do this to make one unused tag disappear. Oh well, not a big problem