Editing Labels

I know that I've said this before, but the Labels feature in Beta Blogger totally rocks. Having said that, though, I will note one problem. There is no way to edit a label, short of editing each post, one by one, and changing the label field. Change the problem label, by retyping it.

That's slow and tedious.

But - that's not the only way to change a label. From the Post Editor menu, that under Classic Blogger just listed the posts, and let you view or edit one, you can now also

• Identify all posts with a given label.
• Select all, or some posts listed.
• Add a new label to posts selected.
• Delete a label from posts selected.

In Blogger Help Group: How Do I? Add and Delete Labels, we see the question

I have three "label" categories on my blog and for some reason I had two of them capitalized and one lower case. Not a big thing, but it was bugging me. I picked the label with the fewest posts in it and went back to write the label in properly, but it kept reverting to the lower case label. I finally figured out to go back to those posts, delete the label (the lower case one that was bugging me) and republish. Luckily I had only one post on that label. I checked the blog and the offending label was gone. Then I went back and edited the post again typing the label correctly and it appeared correctly on the blog. If anybody knows an easier way to do this, it is bound to help somebody.

Actually, using the Post Editor labels list, you could edit any label in a couple minutes, irregardless of how many posts used that label.

1. Identify all posts with the problem label.
2. Add a new temporary label to all posts identified.
3. Identify all posts using the temporary label.
4. Delete the problem label from all posts identified.
5. Add the corrected label to all posts identified.
6. Delete the temporary label from all posts identified.

Sound complicated? Maybe, but it will take maybe a couple minutes to do all of it, with no risk of missing even one post. Each of the above steps involve simple mouse clicks, with minimal typing, and are done once only, in that sequence. If you have lots of posts with a given label, this will automate the process, and do it with way less stress and irritation.