A Simple Way to Bulk Remove/Bulk Delete WordPress Categories

Don’t we have useless and unwanted categories lined up to be cleared and organized but we barely could make time for them?

Whether you are managing fewer or larger taxonomies – attributes, categories; it must have not just been frustrating to delete them one by one, but it might have also sounded tedious when discussed.

So, how do you delete hundreds of WordPress blog categories? What’s the best way to bulk delete them fast? Is there a way to restore them if deleted?

We’ve got you covered. Let us dig in a little deeper to understand better.

What are WordPress categories?

WordPress categories are taxonomies found in the dashboard that let users arrange/group particular kinds of material, typically posts.

Groups of posts are generally referred to as categories. Both website creators and users gain from them because the former may better organize their material and the latter has extra options for navigation besides the primary menu.

By including parent categories that contain multiple regular categories, you can create hierarchies with categories as well. These category hierarchies are kept by WordPress in theme and function files.

Consider a website that sells digital products. So the blog posts for this website may fall into these following categories:

• Product information
• Announcements
• Success stories
• How-tos
• Featured

and so on…

For example, ‘How to bulk edit WordPress posts from one place’ blog post will come under the ‘How-tos’ category.

Categories are generally used to organize blog posts, depending on the subject of the site.

Now as the blog posts increase, categories increase and managing them becomes difficult.

Also, you may want to create new categories with better names and get rid of the old ones. You may even want to delete categories created for test purposes.

So our next section is on WordPress bulk delete categories by using the default feature in WordPress.

How to bulk delete post categories in WordPress?

You can delete one or two categories in WordPress quickly using its basic ‘Categories’ section if you already have them enabled.

1. On the WordPress Admin dashboard, click Posts > Categories.
2. Hover over a category, select the Delete link that appears. Once you accept the confirmation prompt, the category is immediately deleted.

Another option is to open an individual category and at the bottom of the page, find and click the ‘Delete’ link.

To bulk delete categories from the Categories page:

1. On the WordPress Admin dashboard, click Posts > Categories.
2. Simply check the box beside each category name you want to delete.
3. Under the Bulk actions dropdown menu, choose Delete and then click on Apply. Bulk category deletion will require you to confirm once before deleting the categories.
4. Once confirmed, you will see a message that reads Categories deleted.

This method will help you remove all the blog post categories that you no longer wish to have and delete them permanently at once.

How to restore a delete category in WordPress?

No! After you delete a category from WordPress, it cannot be recovered. It’s a permanent delete.

WordPress has a Trash section for posts and pages, but not for categories.

We advise making a new category with the same name if you unintentionally deleted one. This way, you can add any entries that were mistakenly moved to the Uncategorized category back in.

What happens to posts that are assigned categories?

A category’s primary function is to serve as a place for posts to be attached for better categorization.

All your blog posts will no longer fall into a certain category if their associated categories are deleted.

The default category for these categories is ‘Uncategorized’. This is the default post category for all WordPress websites upon launch.

Why not take the default WordPress way to bulk delete categories?

Aside from the many practical benefits of using the bulk delete categories by default in WordPress, there are a few factors that make it much less comfortable and time-confusing. Some of the reasons are:

• It becomes nearly impossible to manually process hundreds of posts.
• Lacks powerful filtering options and is difficult to edit.
• Not a great UX, loads very slow if the number of posts are more.
• Since there is no way to recover categories, they cannot be recovered once removed.

This is a slow procedure that can only be effective for those who have less content and fewer product categories, or for those who have this much time to devote to editing each one of them.

So if you are wondering how to bulk manage hundreds of posts, pages and WooCommerce products and remove/assign categories in bulk, here’s an awesome solution for you.

The easiest way to bulk remove/assign categories in WordPress and WooCommerce

With Smart Manager, you can manage WooCommerce products, orders, users, coupons…any WordPress post type including custom ones with ease and peace using an Excel-like spreadsheet.

This means, for WordPress blog posts and pages, you can change keywords, edit meta description, modify publish date, add images, duplicate posts and pages, export to CSV…and do a lot more from one place.

For now, you can only bulk remove/assign categories from blog posts with Smart Manager but not bulk delete them.

Note – Smart Manager does allow you to bulk delete (move to trash or permanent delete) records for products, orders, coupons and other post types. Support for bulk deleting categories and attributes and managing them will be added soon.

How to bulk remove categories from Posts?

1. Go to WordPress Admin panel > Smart Manager and select Posts dashboard from the drop-down.
2. To select all the posts, click on the header checkbox. Or select only the posts that you want to bulk remove the categories for now. There is also an option of advanced search to locate specific posts. Select the required records.
3. Click on the Bulk Edit option in the top left corner. It will open up a slide-over panel. Choose Category from the first drop-down menu.
4. Choose remove from the second drop-down and choose the appropriate category from the third drop-down.
5. Add other conditions for bulk edit if needed.
6. Click on the Update button.

That’s it.

If you want to bulk assign a category to the posts, choose set to instead of the ‘remove from’ option as mentioned above.

For a single post, you can also use Inline edit to assign or remove categories to a post directly using the sheet editor.

These simple steps can help you remove unnecessary and unused post categories and help you declutter and organize your online store better.

How to bulk remove categories from Products?

As for blog posts, you can also bulk remove/assign categories from WooCommerce products.

1. Go to WordPress Admin panel > Smart Manager and select Products dashboard from the drop-down.
2. To select all the products, click on the header checkbox. Or select only the products that you want to bulk remove the categories for now. There is also an option of advanced search to locate specific products. Select the required records.
3. Click on the Bulk Edit option in the top left corner. It will open up a slide-over panel. Choose Category from the first drop-down menu.
4. Choose remove from the second drop-down and choose the appropriate category from the third drop-down.
5. Add other conditions for bulk edit as required.
6. Click on the Update button.

That’s it.

You can use similar steps to bulk remove/assign attributes to products. Instead of the Category option, select Attributes from the drop-down.

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Additional benefits of Smart Manager

Not just bulk edit or bulk delete, Smart Manager has a ton to offer:

• Easily make multiple edits in the spreadsheet and save them all at once with inline editing.
• The duplicate feature allows you to make a copy of selected records or all the records for any post type.
• Easy CSV export: Export all data or data based on date, search, and columns.
• Custom views: Set up views/dashboards with a limited set of data you want to manage and edit frequently.
• Restrict access to dashboards based on user roles.

Wrapping up

I hope this blog gave you a simple view on bulk deleting categories in WordPress and WooCommerce.

And for better management of posts and pages from one place, you can try out Smart Manager. Most importantly of all, it can do your hours of daily work in seconds. You can always advance by being smart.

FAQs

Q – Is there any difference between tags and categories in WordPress?
A – Yes, While tags offer more specific information about each post, categories serve as a general grouping of post topics.

Q – Can we delete multiple WooCommerce coupons and other WordPress post-type records on Smart Manager?
Yes, you can refer to this video to understand better.

Q – Can we delete featured images and media library images?
A – Yes, this is an advantage of using Smart Manager. By selecting the ‘Attachment’ dashboard from the drop-down menu, you won’t have to go through each product and post. Click the Delete icon on all the images you wish to remove.