Hi everyone,

I'm a little new to MT, having mostly used WP in the past. I'm working with a non-profit organization that's insistent on using MT, however. They're currently using MT3, but I've upgraded them to MT4 (though currently both installations are still running as I develop the layout and such, so I can import the entries back & forth as necessary.)

They have about 3000 entries. I need to mass edit ALL of them, in order to change the categories to which they are assigned. Basically, I'd like to retain the OLD category information (either by setting it as the non-primary category, or by setting it as a tag instead -- I don't really mind which), then assign it to a NEW category (based, for the most part, on what the old category was).

I can do this by manually editing every single entry, but this is going to take me forever! If I'm willing to lose the old category data, I can use the "batch edit" feature, but even then I'll still need to set each new category individually, using the drop-down, rather than doing a true "batch" action. For 3000 entries this is STILL going to take an excessively long time!

I've searched all over and can't find anything to help. I've looked in the database as well, and can't quite find the bits I'd need to edit ... although my guess is that I'd want to be looking in the mt_placement table? I suspect that editing the MySQL table directly might be the most straightforward and quick method of doing this, but I'm not quite sure how the records are stored.

Any tips, tricks, or useful bits of advice would save me a lot of headache and be greatly appreciated!

I think no matter how you look at it, this isn't a small job--it's 3000 entries, after all. Yes, the mt_placement table is what you'd look at. That should be fairly clear: mt_placement.entry_id is the entry ID, and mt_placement.category_id is the category ID. The Add Category plugin may be a good choice, too, though I don't know if it works with MT4.

Thanks.... I think I'll have to do some manual work on the database tables, which I hopefully can do using find & replace commands. There are only about 50 categories, so that's really much simpler! I looked at the Add Categories plugin but, unfortunately, it doesn't work for MT4.

Thanks for the help, though. I wish there were a simpler way, but I guess that's going to be my best bet!