Duplicate Keywork Tags

[Eric34636272uw6l]

I assigned the keyword tag "plane" to several photos one at a time. Instead of one tag assigned to several photos, I now have multiple instances of the "plane" tag, each assigned to one photo. How did this happen and how can I assign all the photos to one "plane" keyword tag and remove all the duplicates?

[Greg_S. · Accepted solution]

What OS and version of Elements are you using?  How did you assign the tags?

Frankly, I have never seen this happen without some message popping up warning you that there is a duplicate tag name being given.

You can fix the issue by:

1. Selecting all of the plane tags in the Keyword Tag hiearchy
2. Right-click on one of them
3. Choose Merge Keyword Tags from the context menu
4. A dialog will then appear asking you which one of the several tags you want to use.  All other tags with the same name will be deleted.

[Eric34636272uw6l]

The steps you provided to fix the issue worked. Thank you. I am using Elements 2024 on Windows 11 (new laptop and new download of elements). With a single photo displayed, I typed the word "plane" in the add custom keywords box and either hit enter or clicked add. After doing this several times on different photos, I saw that "plane" appeared multiple times in the keyword list. I have done the same thing with many other keywords and this is the only one where this happened.

[Greg_S.]

Eric, you are using a method of tagging that most Elements users probably don't discover.   IMO, the preferred method of tagging is to create the tag in a hierarchy and either drag the tag to the selected thumbnail(s) in the grid or vice versa - select and drag the thumbnail(s) to the tag in the keyword list.    See this HelpX article for more details.

Now, having said that, I should add that Elements 2024 has a very effective Smart Tag analysis.  I bet that if you do an Organizer search for plane, most if not all of your plane photos will appear.  (There may be some false positives.)