# How to perform name change for dozens of tags at the same time

**URL:** <https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/how-to-perform-name-change-for-dozens-of-tags-at-the-same-time/113230>\
**Category:** Ignition\
**Created:** [January 12, 2026, 11:48pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/how-to-perform-name-change-for-dozens-of-tags-at-the-same-time/113230 "2026-01-12T23:48:06Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![mrozsebastian93](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@mrozsebastian93](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/mrozsebastian93)\
**Post date:** [January 12, 2026, 11:48pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/how-to-perform-name-change-for-dozens-of-tags-at-the-same-time/113230/1 "2026-01-12T23:48:06Z")

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I am newbie in Ignition world but trying to perform Excel similar action for mass Tag name update. As a example I have 20 folders where tags are named like “r\_AV” but I’d like to change them to “r\_Temp1\_AV”, “r\_Hum1\_AV” etc. I tried to do it with JSON/XML export but excel features are not supported (at least that’s how I understand this).

Any suggestions?

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**Author:** ![michael.flagler](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/michael.flagler/32/26272_2.png) [@michael.flagler](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/michael.flagler)\
**Post date:** [January 13, 2026, 12:05am UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/how-to-perform-name-change-for-dozens-of-tags-at-the-same-time/113230/2 "2026-01-13T00:05:27Z")

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You may be stuck doing this by hand unless you have some pattern you can use by doing search/replace on the JSON file. If they're all named r\_AV and you need custom names on each one, then most likely you're doing it by hand. (Or would it be easier to delete the old tags and use the Multi-instance wizard to create them?)

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**Author:** ![mrozsebastian93](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@mrozsebastian93](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/mrozsebastian93)\
**Post date:** [January 13, 2026, 12:08am UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/how-to-perform-name-change-for-dozens-of-tags-at-the-same-time/113230/3 "2026-01-13T00:08:58Z")

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I have naming pattern but it’s based on the unique ID number for each Tag.

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**Author:** ![paul-griffith](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/paul-griffith/32/37249_2.png) [@paul-griffith](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/paul-griffith)\
**Post date:** [January 13, 2026, 12:23am UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/how-to-perform-name-change-for-dozens-of-tags-at-the-same-time/113230/4 "2026-01-13T00:23:01Z")

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`jq` is (very) capable of smart structural edits of JSON files, such as tag exports, though extremely opaque:

> [@How to create / append bulk tooltips via script with json export?](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/how-to-create-append-bulk-tooltips-via-script-with-json-export/50072/4):
>
> You can do it with jq (a downloadable command-line executable designed to manipulate JSON): walk( if type == "object" and .valueSource == "opc" then .tooltip = "TagName: \(.name) \(.opcItemPath)" else . end) [https://jqplay.org/s/Pe6T7qNEFY](https://jqplay.org/s/Pe6T7qNEFY) I mostly copied this snippet from here:

I highly recommend LLMs to create JQ snippets you can then run en-masse.