Delete hundreds of tags without running the risk of deleting documents

DEVONthink
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I’m redesigning my database. Among the needs I have - having opted for a structure based on group tags and a limited and functionally different use of tags, according to a logic that is useless to explain here - there is the need to eliminate hundreds of tags that I don’t need, but that also cause me great annoyance.
Question number 1: I’ve read that you should never create an item inside a tag. I don’t know if I’ve ever done this, but assuming that this has happened a few times, if I add a tag B to an item originally created within a tag, just in case, by deleting tag A can I prevent the item from being deleted (that is, I assume that the item remains in the database with tag B)?

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  1. You can’t create an item only inside a tag group any longer.
  2. As noted in the Help > Documentation > Getting Started > Tagging section, a kind of replicant I’d made in the tag groups when tags are applied. So deleting a tag just removes those replicants, leaving the items in the database.
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Creating a note while working within a tag
now creates a tagged note in database/inbox

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I too decided to delete all my Tags.

Somehow Devonthink had automatically created Tags and I had hundreds. There was a useful blog post on this some years back, so I did have the correct settings to avoid this happening…( I dont know how it automatically created so many tags.)

I only needed a few Tags anyway (eg Next Item, Important etc), so I just use labels and have stopped using Tags entirely.

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Probably because one of the preferences told it to add tags during import. So it would be worthwhile to check preferences first. Otherwise you’ll soon face the same situation.

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In the past I lost items deleting only the tag

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If you are referring to two or more years ago, in DEVONthink 2.x, it was more possible then.

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Yes that’s what I thought initially. I did have all the preferences turned off. You have to be careful with RSS also which can import a lot of auto tags.

There is a useful blog article on this Tag options.

I am still a bit puzzled as to what caused them. I think it is a glitch.

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All the tags in DEVONthink are either imported Finder tags, created due to the settings in Preferences > RSS & in Preferences > Files > Tags or of course created by the user, smart rules or scripts.

A hint might be what kind of documents were tagged like that and how they were added to the database.