Question regarding changing tags

[Marketa PS]

Dear Richard, 

my question concerns tags. I created these tags that now need to change and I wonder how to do that automatically. I tried to rename a tag - for instance here "action : speak : adjure" to something else, but in the annotation, the old tag does not disappear, I just have to assign the word the new tag and remove the old one (basically a tag gets duplicated and not rewritten). 

I wonder - do I have to make these changes automatically, or is there some better way to do it?

Many thanks!

Markéta

[Richard Eckart de Castilho]

Hello Markéta,

> On 18. Sep 2026, at 08:13, Marketa PS <preininger...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> my question concerns tags. I created these tags that now need to change and I wonder how to do that automatically. I tried to rename a tag - for instance here "action : speak : adjure" to something else, but in the annotation, the old tag does not disappear, I just have to assign the word the new tag and remove the old one (basically a tag gets duplicated and not rewritten).
> I wonder - do I have to make these changes automatically, or is there some better way to do it?

so far, there is no functionality in INCEpTION to rename tags in such a way that
all the annotated documents get updated.

If you work alone, you could:

- export your project
- import it again (so you have a "clone" of the project now)
- delete the documents from it
- export the documents from the original project as CAS-XMI or CAS-JSON
- run a search-and-replace operation using a text editor
- import the documents again into your "cloned" project.

If you work with a group, a similar approach is possible but it would involve
using the INCEpTION remote API to upload the externally fixed documents specifically
into your annotator's accounts (which is currently not possible using the UI).

Sorry for the late response.

Cheers,

-- Richard