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How to Bulk Move Posts to Categories and Tags in WordPress

Many WordPress beginners often get confused about categories and tags. You may end up using too many categories or tags before realizing that you were doing it wrong. The real problem comes when you decide to sort things out. Depending on how many posts you have, this could be a daunting task. In this article, we will show you how to bulk move posts to categories and tags in WordPress.

Video Tutorial

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If you don’t like the video or need more instructions, then continue reading.

First thing you need to do is install and activate the Bulk Move plugin. Upon activation, you need to go to Tools » Bulk Move to move your posts.

Moving posts in bulk from one category to another

This tool allows you to move all posts from one category to another. All you need to do is select category A in the left drop down menu and category B in the right drop down menu. After that just hit the Bulk Move button and the plugin will transfer all posts from category A to category B.

Similarly, you can also move posts between tags. Simply choose a tag, whose posts you want to move and then select the tag where you want posts to be moved.

Bulk Move plugin only moves your posts from one category or tag to another. It does not allow you to move categories to tags, tags to categories, or other custom taxonomies. If you want to move categories between different taxonomies take a look at our guide on how to merge and bulk edit categories and tags in WordPress. We also have a tutorial on how to convert WordPress pages to posts, posts to pages, or any other custom post type.

We hope this article helped you bulk move posts between categories and tags in WordPress. For feedback and questions you can leave a comment below, or you can join us on Twitter.

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Reader Interactions

24 CommentsLeave a Reply

  1. Hi,
    I’m managing a website that has thousands of posts assigned to each category and, trying to achieve this with a different plugin, it reached the limit in execution time (I guess it’s a php limit?) with undefined behavior. Of course, I can’t allow this to happen again..
    Do you have any suggestion on how to bulk move categories with thousands of posts assigned? Will this plugin work?

  2. Is there a way to mass update which category is “primary”? I have a lot of posts that fit into a couple different categories and now see a need to make certain categories primary. Do I need to go through each post one by one to select the primary category, or is there a tool to help with that?

  3. Your blog is very resourceful. Please how do I move my posts to specific pages on wordpress? For example I have a page called “News” and have sub menu pages under News such as Political, Local, Business.
    If I want to move a post to news sub menu “Business” how do I go about it. Please help. Thank you.

  4. You just solved my problem. You are the best.
    I was actually trying to change my site niche from news blog to best affiliate marketing and product reviews, however, I need to put all news categories in one page. I have to change the niche on my site because I have many customers in my super market, however, I ensure that my customers leave a review in any products the buy. however, my product review will be based on my usage review and customer review.

  5. Hello I left a message this morning, but it has gone now, why did you delete it ? I was mot spamming the article….just asking about how to avoid google issues with a lot og disspeared categories
    I even BUY your plugins …so Im a little dissapointed you just delete my question :((

    • Anna, your comment was awaiting moderation, we did not delete it. At WPBeginner we recieve lots of comments and sometimes it takes us time to go through all the comments and approve or reply them. We apologize for the inconvenience this delay caused. Thank you for your continous support, we really appreciate it.

      Admin

  6. HEllo Thank for the great tool, I was doing it manually :(
    But what about google ?, it will create a lot of 404, do I still have to enter the 301 with a redirection plugin ? or is this pluin adding them automatically
    You make great and very helpful articles, I read a lot here (and buy your plugins) but it’s not the first time I read something here and think “but what about google, they didnt mention anything about the 301 or 404”.

    • Anna, redirection plugin will make sure that users are redirected with a 301 header. This will ensure that search engines follow the 301 header and understand that the page has moved to this new location.

      Admin

  7. Sooo why didn’t this article talk people talk? Why doesn’t it say how many tags is too many? You call this for beginners, and it isn’t. I would say it’s intermediary.

  8. Fantastic post . Thanks so much for the help. I have added too many categories and only a week ago trimmed them down. I put some things in subcategories, which was helpful to be under parent categories. Is there any way to make only the Categories show up when they are listed in the categories widget in the sidebar? At the moment all the subcategories show up too. In the end I used a category cloud as the catogory list was still too long. Many Thanks

  9. Do you have any tips or articles that cover how to organize tags and categories properly? I have to admit I am confused about this, confused about the point of tags and categories in the first place, am very random about it, and am probably not doing it correctly.

    Thanks. Am loving the site!

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