WordPress.org

1. snarkwifev2
   Member
   Posted 11 months ago #

   First off, I'm thrilled the Bulk Edit Posts feature is here...makes, well, bulk editing posts ever so much easier.

   HOWEVER.

   Today, I searched for a group of posts, and 13 were returned. In the Edit Bulk Posts frame I wanted to change the category for the entire group from the current category to a new category. I selected the checkbox for the new category, then clicked Update Posts.

   The posts did update, but the new category was added to the original category...so I now have two categories for the posts. I only want the new category.

   Is this a feature that is "working as designed" and if so, how do I get rid of the category I don't want...short of going in and manually editing each individual post - which seems to defeat the purpose of the bulk edit feature.

   Thanks in advance!

2. Otto42
   Moderator
   Posted 11 months ago #

   Hmm.. I don't see a way to bulk remove a category.

   But that feature is definitely working as designed. Posts can be in more than one category. How would it know that you wanted to remove the old category as well as add the new one?

   Anyway, use the Quick Edit feature to remove the categories from the Posts in question. Okay, so it's still manual, but it's not like you have to load up the whole post page to edit the categories.

3. snarkwifev2
   Member
   Posted 11 months ago #

   I have no idea - I can only go off what I would expect as a user, given the interface. Based on the interface, I figured it would be a complete overwrite of the categories for the selected posts. If I want more than one category to be associated with each post in the bulk group, I'd have to select all of the desired categories.

   Based on this information, this new feature allows me to add categories to posts in bulk fashion, but not remove categories from posts or overwrite them with something else in bulk fashion. Seems like pretty limited functionality...should be able to go both directions?

4. snarkwifev2
   Member
   Posted 11 months ago #

   **Update after the extra paragraph was added below your response, after my response**

   Wow...I would think most people are looking forward to the Bulk Edit feature specifically for use with categories, to increase flexibility.

   Good thing I tried this out with a small group of posts before updating, say, a hundred posts and then being stuck with manually editing them all via Quick Edit. It makes absolutely zero sense to do a bulk update to add a category, then go through several Quick Edit updates to remove the category I don't want. Doesn't mean I won't do it, because I apparently have to - but that's not a super-efficient way to use the application.

   Regardless of "Quick Edit" being faster than making updates the old-fashioned way, it still remains that this particular feature could be a little more flexible going forward. Some acknowledgment of that rather than a poke at my wanting to reduce my level of manual updating would have been appreciated.

5. Otto42
   Moderator
   Posted 11 months ago #

   Some acknowledgment of that rather than a poke at my wanting to reduce my level of manual updating would have been appreciated.

   Huh? What "poke" are you talking about? Chill, man.

   Heck, I agree with you, a way to bulk remove categories makes sense. It appears to have been overlooked. I'm not sure how you'd actually implement the interface, but I do agree that it needs to be added.

6. murky
   Member
   Posted 11 months ago #

   I've got the same issue.

   I had lots of subcategories, with the advent of tags I want to tag posts and have a few parent categories.

   Ideally, I'd delete a category, and reassign to parent category, but I can't do that.

   The tag to post converter removes the category information completely.

   So, I've been using bulk edit to choose a category (20 posts at a time.... I'd like to have the option for more) and add tags and parent category. Then I have deleted the sub-category.

   Unfortunately, I made an error and now have 183 uncategorized posts.

   I keep 'uncategorized' empty, so I know all of these should be in category X. That's easy.... bulk edit, add category X (a few operations as I can only do 20 posts at once, but it's okay).... but to remove 'uncategorized' it's 183 edits (each of several clicks).

   To make this whole process easier, on the category edit screen, when a category is deleted, the option to 'reassign the posts' would be very handy (reassign to parent rather that to uncategorized seems to be common sense to me).

7. BellTinkr
   Member
   Posted 11 months ago #

   Another user in need of "bulk remove category" checking in. I want to get rid of "Uncategorized", which is what happens when I mobile blog. It's great that I can come home and ADD categories in a bulk manner, but it won't let me REMOVE the "uncategorized" category in a bulk manner.

   When in the Edit Posts screen, I check the boxes next to the posts I wish to apply the Bulk Action "Edit". A scroll box with the Categories appears.

   If I only have ONE post selected, the current Categories for that post have a check mark in the box next to them in the scroll box. But if I have MORE than one post selected, none of the categories are checked. Therefore there is no opportunity to "uncheck" them, and this leaves us with only one option - edit each post individually, one at a time, to remove "uncategorized".

   This is unfortunate when I've been sight seeing all day and I've sent upwards of 25+ mobile posts to the blog.

   I've since changed my default category from "uncategorized" to something I won't mind having there forever, but really, there should be a way provided to bulk remove a category. Blogger can do it, why can't WordPress?

   Thanks for listening,
   Tink *~*~*
   http://MyMobileAdventures.com

8. adamcsmith
   Member
   Posted 11 months ago #

   Same here, that is the first thing I wanted to do. I ran into this problem just last week with WP 2.6. I manually recategorized 32 posts, so I was excited to try the bulk edit feature in 2.7. The bulk action editor is a welcome addition, and I imagine it will see further refinement in future releases, but I was bummed about the inability to recategorize with this tool.

   Otherwise, I think the 2.7 UI is really quite sexy (as far as software goes) and the removal of additional clicks to get common tasks done is a nice improvement.

9. cgorton
   Member
   Posted 11 months ago #

   I ran into this also. Here's what I think the best behavior would be-
   similar to formatting cells in MS Excel. If all of the selected posts have category A, then category A shows up as checked in the bulk edit categories window. If none have category A, that checkbox is blank. If some do, it is grayed out. You can click it to make all selected posts have that category or not.
   This of course applies to multiple categories.
   I think that's the best of both worlds.

10. ixley
    Member
    Posted 10 months ago #

    same issue here... I really don't need the 'uncategorized' category at all – especially when it's not even smart enough to turn itself off when other categories are applied! And unfortunately the bulk edit function won't detect if categories are applied, so you can't use it to remove categories from posts this way... *sigh*..

11. ejabs
    Member
    Posted 10 months ago #

    Same problem here.

    Also, when you remove a category, Wordpress claims to move those posts to the "Default Category"...well I've been working with it for a few hours now & it doesn't work.

    The worst part is I saw it work once, but every other time my default category post count never increased when deleting a different category (and no, the post were not already added to the default category).

    This part of wordpress obviously needs some work & improvement. Overall though...the app is killer!

12. ricardobeat
    Member
    Posted 9 months ago #

    Ran into the same issue 10 minutes ago.

    "I'm not sure how you'd actually implement the interface"

    Exactly like the 'edit post' page: check for inclusion, uncheck for removal (already assigned categories would appear checked from start).

    It's kind of scary realizing you might have the need to move/reassign a category some time in the future, with hundreds of published posts, and there's no tool available for that!

    Also it would make sense if the "uncategorized" category is removed as soon as a category is assigned to a post!

13. mnr
    Member
    Posted 9 months ago #

    I would love to have a way to delete ALL posts within a particular category too...

14. davidsanger
    Member
    Posted 8 months ago #

    you can delete a category which will then remove it from all posts which have it assigned. In some cases this will help with the bulk edit/remove.

    @mnr - in the edit panel, filter by category, then click the post checkbox at the bottom and then bulk action>delete

15. lealaurielle
    Member
    Posted 7 months ago #

    Hi. I think I have just found the solution to this unresolved issue... I THINK... (Well, the reason for 'I THINK' twice, was, so far, it's been working for me, and am on WP2.7.1, but I'm no so sure if it'll work for you guys, you know, who knows, right? But I tot I might just suggest it anyways...)

    I've came across this blog during my intense search on Google to help me out with this matter of unable to remove the 'uncategorized' category I've had as standard category for all my posts during me trying to do bulk editing for the category thingy. This blog suggested me to take up this Batch Category plugin. Although the website/ plugin author mentioned nothing about the plugin working for WP 2.7.1, but it does say that the plugin works fine with WP 2.5+ so i take that + as a, "Yes, it'll work with your WP2.7.1"

    SO I decided to try it out and my my, it does work! Finally! Hiks! And so without any further delay, please visit this site named Roblog and get the plugin and install it! Try it! Hope it'll work for you lots, as much as it works for me! Have fun! :)

16. syncbox
    Member
    Posted 6 months ago #

    You could remove that category, like said... I think at that point, you get asked if you want to put the posts in some other category, right?

    Not elegant and if you aren't removing ALL posts from that category, it's a total pita... definitely something overlooked, especially, if like me, you have 400 posts or so to edit!

    hmmm...

    Imo, a person should be able to right-click on the category link in the list of posts and be able to choose "remove from this category" or something... I understand that the list of categories displayed when bulk editing cannot show the current category(ies) for posts because they could and likely DO vary...

    Anyway, that's my suggestion. I hope it's fixed soon. My clicking arm is already tired from quick editing all these posts. I cannot delete the category because I still need it for SOME posts.

17. syncbox
    Member
    Posted 6 months ago #

    An additional issue with bulk editing is that when you use the "All Posts" feature to add a category or tag or whatever you CAN do... you only get 15 posts and there are NO <<next | prev>> links to the next or previous 15 posts to bulk edit.

    Making All Posts useless, don'tcha think?

18. cewyattjr
    Member
    Posted 1 month ago #

    Maybe there's a way to go in with phpmyadmin and zap a table? The "remove posts" seems like it works for everything but "Uncategorized" which isn't removable in the interface.

19. cewyattjr
    Member
    Posted 1 month ago #

    Actually found this:
    http://sudarmuthu.com/wordpress/bulk-move

    ...which did the trick for me!

Reply

You must log in to post.