How to Convert WordPress Categories to Tags or Vice Versa

There may come a day when you decide that either you want to convert your categories to tags or vice versa.

Suppose, for example, you’ve found that you keep reusing a certain tag again and again. After a certain number, it occurs to you that it might be worthwhile to create a category for that term.

Of course you could manage to do this manually, but there’s a much easier and automatic way – with a plugin called Taxonomy Converter.

Using Taxonomy Converter

After installing the Taxonomy Converter plugin and activating it, you will need to perform a step that is a little bit unusual for a plugin – you’ll need to “activate” it a second time by going to Tools > Import > Taxonomy Converter.

Once you click on Taxonomy Converter in the Tools section, you will see a screen for converting or copying categories of tags.

Running Through an Example

Let’s say that after accumulating a number of tags with one term, you want to create a category with that term (and automatically have all those posts moved into that new category).

In the example below, we’ll “copy” the tag called “bulk” and make it a category. When we “copy” the term (vs. “convert” the tag), it will create a new category but also keep the original tags as well.

And now, as you can see, we have a new category called “bulk” that has 14 posts in it (the same number of “bulk” tags that we had).

Converting to Tags or Categories

Of course you could “convert” instead of “copying.” The difference is that if you were to convert the tags into categories, then there would be no more tags with that name. By “copying” the tags, you end up with categories with that name, but you also keep your original tags as well.