Hi,
Unfortunately I have been bitten by the RSS > convert hashtags and categories to tags syndrome
Result is > 14000 tags that I have to clean up / delete.
What I’m searching for:
some way to create a keyb shortcut that will delete the selected tag (preferably e.g. move to “some” group to have a safety net, then later select all from that group and delete, then empty trash)
Problem seems to be that I can not find a keyb shortcut or menu>path>to>delete>tag to open the context (right-click) menu?
If the latter were to exist, I could use it in Keyboard Maestro.
If there’s anything you can identify the tags you want to delete with, you could use a smart group to collect them. Perhaps creation date or URL can help to identify them? Then select all items in the smart group and delete or move them.
UI automation is the worst possible approach, I think. You can access the context menu in BetterTouchTool, but would you want to do that for more than 14000 tags?
Unfortunately there is no easy single rule that I can think of to filter these items.
To me, it seems that the easiest way to go through these Tags would be:
Sidebar > Tags > unfold (to access the Tags as a list below)
Then > keyboard arrow key > downward key > go to the to-be-removed tag “until it is higlighted / selected”
Then do the magic keyboard shortcut => either delete or move selected tag to “Tags to be deleted-group”
It’s been a very long time I’ve looked into BetterTouchTool, will look into it’s capabilities, but I would imagine that Keyboard Maestro (which I have) would be at least equally capable… but then again, I might be mistaken..
I don’t know if KM can address items in the context menu.
But still: going about this manually seems error-prone and tedious. Perhaps it’s easier to label those tags that you want to keep and afterwards remove the others, non-labelled ones?
I can’t think of a simple way using Keyboard Maestro to do this, but I think there may be a workaround using DEVONthink’s in-built facility to file to the most recent target, which does have a shortcut (cmd-opt-t). So,
Set up your destination group (Tags for Deletion)
Go to the first unnecessary tag and move it manually
Go the next 13,999 tags and press cmd-opt-t (the menu item will show Edit > Move to "Tags for Deletion" again).
You can select multiple tags and the shortcut works the same way.
It will still be an almighty pain, but it gives you something to add to the Keyboard Maestro macro.
You could use a toolbar search for kind:news item:tagged first. Then select all found items and use e.g. Tools > Batch Processing… > Remove All Tags to remove their tags. Afterwards search for kind:ordinarytag item:!data to find all unnecessary tags, trash them and empty the trash. However, I would recommend a backup of your database(s) first.
I remember something about the sidebar not being a valid target for keyboard shortcuts/menu bar commands and script commands using selected records.
Just work from the item list. Here you can ⌘⌫ to move items to the trash, move items to the most recent destination with ⌘⌥T or use the Move To popover (⌃⌘M) to select a destination.
Do you mean to say that you can’t enter kind:news in the search bar? Or that your tags are all of the kind HTML text?
And what does searching for kind: ordinarytag item:!data
give you?
Sorry, I got the menu wrong as I was typing it from memory – it’s Data > Move To > Move to … again, not Edit> …
The feature is definitely in DT3 – I’ve been using it for years. There is a passing reference to it on page 115 of the DT3 manual, but it doesn’t give a shortcut there, and I can’t find one on the shortcuts page either…
I’m (almost) certain that I didn’t add the shortcut myself, but it you’re not seeing it, then you can always create one in System Preferences.
Did you see my earlier reply? The sidebar is not a valid target for keyboard shortcuts. Work from the item list in that case. Just select the Tags group in the sidebar, and you will see all your tags in the item list:
There is confusion though.
I remember something of an old article about Tags, folders and groups. Can’t retrieve it though, even Wayback Machine hasn’t got it.
There’s mention and a pointer here on the forum, but the link died.
Anyway:
The confusion being that when selected in the lefthand sidebar, it is represented as a tag with the tag label.
Once deleted though, the same tag shifts look and looks now as a folder or group.
Strange enough, when searching the help > Iconology lists “Group is a tag, too”
