mass management mode

editing files one at a time might be fine if you're tagging them as you upload and you upload new things infrequently, but for editing many files quickly you can use the mass management mode from the search page by pressing E or clicking the Manage button at the upper right in the topmenu

the background will change to a dark blue, and the management menu will appear at the bottom of the window to indicate that you're in the management mode

there are several ways to select files

you can click their thumbnails individually to toggle whether they're selected or not

selected file thumbnails have a bright pink background and shrink to ensure the background is visible around it to indicate that it's selected

you can click and drag to draw a selection box around many thumbnails (by default this will deselect any currently selected files first

you can hold down Ctrl while dragging to remove from the current selection

you can hold down Shift while dragging to add to the current selection

the number of files currently selected will be indicated at the lower right of the management menu

the management menu has several options, most of which are only available when one or more files are selected

when the management menu is hovered or when a management field is displayed, thumbnails which aren't selected will be dimmed so you can better identify your current selection

Select none deselects all files and Select all selects all files

Remove tags displays a tag field which allows you to enter tags to remove from all selected files

Add tags displays a tag field which allows you to enter tags to add to all selected files

Copy tags copies the combined tags of all selected files to your clipboard

Create set checks to see if any of the selected files are already part of one or more sets

if they are, it will ask if you'd like to sync all sets on all selected files

if you select OK, it will make sure all selected files are part of each set that any of them was a part of

if you select Cancel (or if none of the selected files were in a set) it will ask you if you'd like to add all the selected files to a new set

if you select OK it will generate a random set tag and add it to all selected files

Remove files will ask you to confirm that you'd really like to remove the selected files

if you select ok then it will completely remove the selected files

Rebuild files will regenerate the thumbnails and summaries of all selected files

Change publish time displays a publish datetime field which allows you to set the publish time of all selected files

you can use absolute times, blank for current time, or relative times to nudge each file's current publish time by that amount