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WPBeginner» Blog» Plugins» How to Merge and Bulk Edit Categories and Tags in WordPress

How to Merge and Bulk Edit Categories and Tags in WordPress

Last updated on April 21st, 2017 by Editorial Staff
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How to Merge and Bulk Edit Categories and Tags in WordPress

Are you looking for a quick way to merge and bulk edit categories / tags in WordPress? After a while, most WordPress blogs need some spring cleaning. Sometimes this requires moving posts between categories and tags or merging similar categories and tags together. In this article, we will show you how to easily merge and bulk edit categories and tags in WordPress.

How to Merge and Bulk Edit Categories and Tags in WordPress

When Do You Need to Merge Categories and Tags in WordPress?

Many users are not aware of how to properly use categories and tags when starting a new WordPress blog.

After a while, they have too many categories or tags. Some of these categories are not active and tags with just a single post.

A lot of time, you may find that your categories or tags are too similar and can be filed under a single category or tag.

One way to solve this is by editing each post and reassign categories and tags. However, it will take too much time, and you may still miss some posts.

The easier solution is to bulk edit and merge categories / tags in WordPress.

Merge and Bulk Edit Categories and Tags in WordPress

First thing you need to do is install and activate the Term Management Tools plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you need to visit Posts » Categories page and click on the ‘Bulk actions’ dropdown menu.

Bulk actions for categories and tags

You will see new bulk actions added to the interface. Here are the things you can do with these bulk actions.

You can merge categories, tags, or terms in a custom taxonomy.

Merge categories, tags, or terms in custom taxonomies

You can move all terms from one taxonomy to another. For example, you can move all your categories to tags.

Change taxonomy

You can quickly assign a parent category to multiple categories.

Set parent category to multiple categories

Categories and tags help you organize content on your website. This help users easily locate the content they want to view. Properly using categories and tags is also good for boosting your search engine rankings.

We recommend that you go through the process of category / tag clean up every year to keep your site organized.

We hope this article helped you easily merge and bulk edit categories and tags in WordPress. You may also want to see our step by step WordPress SEO guide for beginners.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

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About the Editorial Staff

Editorial Staff at WPBeginner is a team of WordPress experts led by Syed Balkhi. Trusted by over 1.3 million readers worldwide.

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32 Comments

Leave a Reply
  1. Vitor says:
    Feb 2, 2021 at 10:23 am

    Thank you so much guys! It works perfectly

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      Feb 3, 2021 at 8:59 am

      Glad our guide was helpful :)

      Reply
  2. Ellis Benus Columbia, MO Web Developer says:
    Jun 30, 2020 at 2:47 pm

    This plugin hasn’t been updated in 5 years. Is there a new one you can recommend?

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      Jul 1, 2020 at 8:33 am

      We don’t have an alternative we would recommend at the moment but this plugin should still be working. For the plugin not being updated you may want to take a look at our article below:
      https://www.wpbeginner.com/opinion/should-you-install-plugins-not-tested-with-your-wordpress-version/

      Reply
  3. Jim Gersetich says:
    Feb 24, 2020 at 11:48 am

    The Term Management Tools plugin is out of date. It hasn’t been updated for four years. You might consider revising this page.

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      Feb 24, 2020 at 1:13 pm

      Thank you for letting us know about this, we will certainly look into alternatives as soon as we are able :)

      Reply
  4. Afzaal Ashraf says:
    Apr 10, 2019 at 3:37 pm

    It Works Perfectly

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      Apr 11, 2019 at 10:30 am

      Glad our recommended method worked :)

      Reply
      • Valerian says:
        Apr 16, 2019 at 9:34 pm

        I’m relieved to read that it still works although the plugin hasn’t been updated in quite a while. I wasn’t able to find an up to date plugin that performs similarly. This site has been a huge help to me – thank you!

        Reply
        • WPBeginner Support says:
          Apr 17, 2019 at 10:43 am

          You’re welcome :)

  5. David says:
    Dec 21, 2018 at 9:24 pm

    This plugin “Term Management Tools” no longer exists on the WordPress plugin repository.

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      Dec 27, 2018 at 1:55 pm

      The plugin is still available but has not been updated. We will be sure to take a look into alternatives

      Reply
  6. Nancy Proctor says:
    Aug 19, 2017 at 1:39 pm

    I have been spring cleaning my tags and categories. I would like to update a number of posts with the correct tags. I downloaded several of your suggestions like Simple Tag.

    What I want to do: I have a tag ‘Health’ and a number of exisiting posts about the local hospital. Can I do a search on content and add tag to posts.

    thank you. I wish I had found you earlier!!

    Reply
  7. Katie Corder says:
    Apr 14, 2017 at 12:19 pm

    After you merge or convert tags with this plug-in, does the original tag URL merge with it, or does it a create a 404 error that then results in the creation of a 301 redirect? Thanks!

    Reply
  8. Richard Sandbrook says:
    Jun 8, 2016 at 10:08 am

    I had just completed the task of rationalizing categories categories and tags when I discovered – too late – this post. My question is this: I have made the changes on WordPress, but I have not made the myriad of redirections using the Redirection plug-in (mainly because I don’t understand what information to fill in). If I do not redirect, will that be a major problem for searchers using search engines?

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      Jun 8, 2016 at 8:28 pm

      People coming from search to a category or tag page will see a 404 error. If a lot of your traffic lands on such pages, then you will loose significant traffic.

      Reply
  9. WPBeginner Staff says:
    Jan 14, 2015 at 2:51 pm

    Uncategorized is actually also a category and you can move its posts using the plugin just like all other categories.

    Reply
  10. Tom Dupuis says:
    Jan 14, 2015 at 1:24 am

    What about bulk moving uncategorized posts to another category? There’s no checkbox for the uncategroized option.

    Reply
  11. WPBeginner Staff says:
    Jun 16, 2014 at 9:18 pm

    Jason that’s because unlike categories, Tags are not hierarchical and can not have parent or child tags. Please take a look at our guide on Categories vs Tags.

    Reply
    • Jason Crawford says:
      Dec 2, 2014 at 11:08 am

      I’m not sure why I didn’t reply to this when I saw it the first time. I felt a bit dunce. You’re right and I was overlooking that. Thanks for the response.

      Reply
  12. Jason Crawford says:
    Jun 14, 2014 at 9:20 pm

    I must be missing something here. I thought I’d run over and check it out, but I can’t see an option for parent/child tags.

    Reply
  13. mac says:
    Sep 13, 2013 at 10:43 am

    works well but can not bulk delete cats from multiple posts. Thats a big problem when you want to delete a category from a post but not actually delete the cat itself

    Reply
  14. Max says:
    Mar 1, 2013 at 11:25 am

    This is great, but you might want to touch on 301 redirects for the post that are merging into a new category or your probably going to be losing a lot of search enginge traffic.

    Reply
    • Editorial Staff says:
      Mar 2, 2013 at 6:56 am

      That would only impact you if your posts use category in their permalink structure like our site does. In that case, you would need to use a plugin like Redirection:

      https://www.wpbeginner.com/plugins/how-to-track-404-pages-and-redirect-them-in-wordpress/

      This will take care of most things for you.

      Reply
  15. Jamie Smith says:
    Jan 19, 2013 at 12:28 pm

    I’m sorry to be a dolt, but I’m trying to figure out if this is what I’m looking for. I want to change my categories all together and remove some, make some child categories, etc. It’s not really about moving posts for me, it’s about the category structure. Is this plugin still what I need to use?

    Reply
    • Editorial Staff says:
      Jan 19, 2013 at 7:49 pm

      You can use this plugin to merge two categories.

      Reply
  16. Gautam Doddamani says:
    Jan 14, 2013 at 1:25 am

    thanks now i can clean out my blog from unwanted tags…just one question i wanted to ask…will the deleted tags and categories get removed from posts and will it effect my SEO…as they will ultimately lead to 404 errors in GWT…

    Reply
  17. Bill Saragosa says:
    Jan 11, 2013 at 5:39 am

    Thanks for this post… I was wondering what I was going to do with some of those clumsy categories that no longer look like such a good idea! Now I have a starting point.

    Cheers,
    Bill

    Reply
  18. Bernie says:
    Jan 10, 2013 at 8:03 pm

    Wish I had know about this when I started tidying up my blog some time ago. This has made me get rid of all the uncategorised post on my blog. Additionally this organisation is helping me focus the post on my blog. I already use another plugin that creates pages based on Categories.

    Keep the good work coming!

    Reply
  19. Bjorn says:
    Jan 10, 2013 at 11:16 am

    Can this tool also add new tags quickly to posts? Because i imported like 500 messages from my old website where i did not use wordpress and tags.

    Reply
    • Noumaan says:
      Jan 13, 2013 at 4:13 am

      Bjorn you can try the bulk edit mode in Posts > All Posts. If all 500 messages are imported as posts and you have a limited number of categories then you can select multiple posts and assign them tags.

      Reply
  20. Michael says:
    Jan 10, 2013 at 11:13 am

    Man, this couldn’t have come at a better time. I was just staring at my personal website, which is pretty old, in utter dismay. I have 399 tags that have accumulated over the years, as well as categories that are ancient, and was dreading cleaning up such a huge mess. I’m going to put this plugin to the test!

    Reply

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