Multi-note editing

[Valery_Kondakoff]

From time to time there is a need to add some info to multiple notes at once: for example, specific tag, internal link, or just a line of text.
I propose to add a dialog window with an input field to add a line of text to the end of all currently selected notes. Of course, multiple notes selection should be implemented first!

[ahackel]

Use case or problem

I would like to have a way to edit common properties of multiple notes at once.

Proposed solution

A great way to bulk edit data is a property inspector similar to the chrome developer inspector or the inspector window in Unity. I would like to have something similar in Obsidian: A window / pane that shows the common properties of all selected notes and allows the user to edit them. The properties would be displayed as a list. When changing a value in the inspector the property would be changed in all selected notes.

Properties would be: Tags and other frontmatter, inline fields, outgoing and ingoing links.

[rigmarole]

(Please search before making a new FR. Merged to here.)

The challenge I see with this is that there is no enforced structure in an Obsidian note. There is nothing definite to edit. YAML for example is just one supported type of formal structure.

How would you propose resolving this? Would a property convention such as YAML need to be enforced? Would it be auto-detected to match the current style the user happens to be using? What if notes have a mixed style, or syntax errors in a subset of the notes?

Even links are stored as Markdown text. Where would this feature decide to add those links? Append? Prepend? Enforced type of structure?

Or are you just proposing a way simply to edit existing ones, and not necessarily add? (Maybe I was wrong to merge these if “edit” and “add” are meant to be distinct?)

---

Related FR and plugin requests:

Tag-specific, but similar:
https://forum.obsidian.md/t/assign-tag-to-multiple-files/9750

Somewhat related plugin request:

Request: Multi-file tag manager

I started to use Obsidian more actively in the past few month and find graph view being useless on large number of notes. So I filter them out using tags. For example, I’d be exploring a topic and create outlines and summaries for it. At some point I’d start exploring the topic’s graph, but would want to #exclude the outline files to avoid biasing the graph to these super nodes. Similarly, some topics are very dense with notes, so I’d love to add a temporary tag to these notes and exclude it as …

[ahackel]

Thanks for cleaning up - I just searched for "property inspector’.

How would you propose resolving this? Would a property convention such as YAML need to be enforced? Would it be auto-detected to match the current style the user happens to be using? What if notes have a mixed style, or syntax errors in a subset of the notes?

Good question: I would keep the existing format of each note if possible. If a property is stored in YAML in one note the change should also be saved there. If a change is made and a note does not have a property yet the inspector needs to make a decision where to store the new value. If this is YAML or markdown text could be a setting.

Or are you just proposing a way simply to edit existing ones, and not necessarily add? (Maybe I was wrong to merge these if “edit” and “add” are meant to be distinct?)

This could also be a setting. Some people may want to add new properties if it doesn’t exist in a note. Others may want to leave such notes untouched.

[CoachKidd]

+1 for the multi-note adding of tags.

Now that properties are available it makes sense to me that this can be targetted for manipulation of the text.

[aaronjz]

I am for this batch properties editing, as well!