# Quick way to find unused tags? **URL:** \ **Category:** Ignition\ **Created:** [January 21, 2020, 8:27pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/quick-way-to-find-unused-tags/31490 "2020-01-21T20:27:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![christopher.berg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/67e7ee/32.png) [@christopher.berg](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/christopher.berg)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2020, 8:27pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/quick-way-to-find-unused-tags/31490/1 "2020-01-21T20:27:48Z")
Is there a way to find tags that aren’t associated with a project any longer? We’ve removed defunct projects but we haven’t been very consistent with tag organization over the years. I’m now certain that we have a fair number of tags that are no longer associated with any project at all. I’d like to get rid of them but there’s no obvious way that I can see to ID orphaned tags… thanks in advance… ---
**Author:** ![Kevin.Herron](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/kevin.herron/32/7259_2.png) [@Kevin.Herron](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/Kevin.Herron)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2020, 9:11pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/quick-way-to-find-unused-tags/31490/2 "2020-01-21T21:11:18Z")
While we probably should have some kind of tooling to aid this by now… we don’t. Mostly because it’s difficult, if not impossible, to tell you with certainty a tag is no longer used because many times the only reference to a tag will be through a dynamic tag path either in scripting or as part of an expression in UDTs or bindings, etc… ---
**Author:** ![jlandwerlen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/bc8723/32.png) [@jlandwerlen](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/jlandwerlen)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2020, 11:53pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/quick-way-to-find-unused-tags/31490/3 "2020-01-21T23:53:07Z")
Try this, it’s a template, v7.9.12. You can stick in a window, or just run as a template. It has worked for me. If you want to search all tags leave the filter blank. It can take a while depending on how many tags you have. [BadTags.proj](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/original/2X/c/c60cfc72d07485e77223da0ef9fbdaa791f2832f.proj) (9.6 KB) ---
**Author:** ![jlandwerlen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/bc8723/32.png) [@jlandwerlen](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/jlandwerlen)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2020, 11:54pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/quick-way-to-find-unused-tags/31490/4 "2020-01-21T23:54:24Z")
Sorry, I read your post a little closer, this probably won’t do what you are looking for. But, it’s there if you need it. ---
**Author:** ![witman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/d2c977/32.png) [@witman](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/witman)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2020, 12:19am UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/quick-way-to-find-unused-tags/31490/5 "2020-01-22T00:19:05Z")
> [@Kevin.Herron](#): > > it’s difficult, if not impossible, to tell you with certainty a tag is no longer used How crazy an idea would it be to have a last read timestamp property on tags? ---
**Author:** ![robmann](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9de0a6/32.png) [@robmann](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/robmann)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2020, 7:19pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/quick-way-to-find-unused-tags/31490/6 "2020-02-04T19:19:49Z")
Excluding reads by Gateway status browse and Designer Tag panel browsing ---
**Author:** ![sungkhum](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/sungkhum/32/10636_2.png) [@sungkhum](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/sungkhum)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2020, 7:29pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/quick-way-to-find-unused-tags/31490/7 "2020-03-17T19:29:40Z")
A tool like this would be great. I’ve imported tags from other projects but pulled way more tags than needed for what I am doing. Would be great to auto-clean tags that are unused. ---
**Author:** ![Brian\_Stilson](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/brian_stilson/32/73410_2.png) [@Brian\_Stilson](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/Brian_Stilson)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2025, 5:38pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/quick-way-to-find-unused-tags/31490/8 "2025-04-24T17:38:33Z")
That could be very difficult considering the existence of Driven Tag groups. Driven Tags can be scanned on-demand, so it's possible that a legitimate, used tag could have a value that hasn't been updated in days, weeks, months, etc. simply because the driving expression on its' group hasn't triggered a new read. There's no truly universal "rule" that a tag with data _X_ period of time since last read is definitely bad. ---
**Author:** ![witman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/d2c977/32.png) [@witman](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/witman)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2025, 8:26pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/quick-way-to-find-unused-tags/31490/9 "2025-04-24T20:26:21Z")
Agreed; it would be up to the programmer to verify. Last read would provide more information than nothing. However, IA has given us a better tool for this now, so we're no longer comparing to nothing: > [@Tag Reference Tracker](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/tag-reference-tracker/80999): > > Intro At ICC, we announced that, in the 8.1.34 release, a new tool to identify what resource in Ignition is utilizing different tags would be released; a feature we call the Tag Reference Tracker. The code for this long awaited feature has been merged and will be available in the nightly build starting the morning of 10/26/2023. The [original request for this feature](https://inductiveautomation.canny.io/ignition-features-and-ideas/p/tags-cross-reference) was created a little over 9 years ago and there were multiple variations of what people were looking for this feature to be. We …