Bulk actions on contacts

Bulk actions on contacts · Help

Tagging a hundred people one by one takes an afternoon, and halfway through you click the wrong row. Selection mode reduces that to a single move: you mark rows, type the tag in the bar at the bottom, and everyone is updated at once. This guide covers selection mode, every control in the bar, and the limits of bulk actions.

⚠️ Selection mode needs contact edit or delete permission; in the viewer role the Select contacts button is not drawn at all. Bulk deletion is available only to the owner and administrators. A hidden button is not security on its own: the server checks the same permission for every record.

In this article you will find:

Turning selection mode on and off
The fields and buttons in the action bar
Adding tags in bulk
Removing tags in bulk
Selecting everyone who matches the filter
Deleting in bulk
Limits and known issues
Common mistakes

Turning selection mode on and off

Open the Contacts screen.
Press Select contacts to the right of the title (on a phone the button sits to the right of the tabs).
Tap the rows you want. The row is marked and a check appears at its right end.
When you are finished, press Done in the bar or the close icon.

While selection mode is on, the list does not behave like an ordinary list: tapping a row does not open the contact card, and tag badges in rows do not apply a filter. That is deliberate — otherwise you would navigate away while trying to select. To reach a contact card, leave the mode first.

When the mode is off, no checkbox sits at the start or end of the rows. The list stays clean whenever you are not acting on it.

The fields and buttons in the action bar

In selection mode an action bar appears at the bottom of the page. The bar is not pinned to the screen — it sticks to the page, so it never covers the last rows of the list and you can still tap them.

The bar holds:

The selection count — such as "12 selected". While nothing is selected it shows the hint "Tap rows to select them." instead.
The tag box — where you type the tags to apply. Its hint shows that several tags are allowed: separate them with commas.
Add tag — adds the tags in the box to the selected people.
Remove tag — removes the tags in the box from the selected people.
Select everything on this page — marks every row on the page currently shown.
Select all … matching — a separate selection that is not limited to the page on screen (explained below).
Clear selection — removes the marks without leaving the mode.
Delete — deletes the selected people (only for those with delete permission).
Done — closes the mode.

On a phone the bar stays on one line: everything except the count, the result text and the close control folds under an Actions heading. Tapping that heading opens the tag box and the buttons.

While the tag box is empty, Add tag and Remove tag are disabled: a bulk action with an empty tag would do nothing and still report success.

Adding tags in bulk

Turn on selection mode and mark the people.
Type the tag into the tag box in the bar. For several tags, separate them with commas: vip, hot lead.
Press Add tag.
The bar reports how many people were updated.

The number in that result is the real number, not an estimate: people who already carried the tag are not counted. You will never select ten people and see "12 contacts updated"; you may well see "8 contacts updated", because two of them already had the tag.

When the action finishes, the tag box is cleared. That is deliberate: it prevents the same tag from being applied to your next selection by accident.

Tag spelling is lowercased according to the account's language and existing spellings are kept. Adding "VIP" does not duplicate a "vip" tag already on the contact.

⚠️ Note: Bulk tagging triggers automations. If one of your rules listens for the "tag added" event, tagging 400 people runs that rule 400 times and messages may go out to customers. Review your rules before a large tagging run. See Rules.

Removing tags in bulk

The steps are the same; only the final button differs: type the tag in the box and press Remove tag.

Removal also catches spelling differences: removing "VIP" also removes a tag stored as "vip" or "Vip" on the contact. That is how you clean up the same tag written several ways over the years.

People who do not carry the tag are not counted; nothing changes for them.

Removing a tag also triggers rules that listen for the "tag removed" event.

Selecting everyone who matches the filter

An ordinary selection covers only the page on screen. When you change page, or when a search narrows the list, rows that leave the screen drop out of the selection. Otherwise people you marked on page one would stay selected out of sight and your action would reach records you were not looking at.

When you need more than a page, use Select all … matching in the bar. The number on that button is the total count matching the current filter.

That selection works differently: the identifiers are not sent from the browser — the server derives them from the filter. This way no contact from another account, and no contact outside your scope, can enter the action.

In this mode only tagging works; the delete button is disabled. A deletion derived from a filter would also remove records you never saw on screen.

⚠️ Note: The "select all matching" option does not take the Awaiting our reply filter into account. If you use it while that filter is applied, the action reaches everyone matching the other filters regardless of reply state. The number on the button and the number of people actually affected can therefore differ. To act in bulk on people awaiting a reply, select them page by page.

Deleting in bulk

Bulk deletion permanently removes the selected people together with all their messages and notes. It cannot be undone.

Turn on selection mode and mark the people to delete.
Press the bin button in the bar.
Read the confirmation: it says how many people will be deleted.
Confirm.
The bar reports how many were deleted.

Records deleted in the meantime, or ones that left your scope, are skipped and reported separately: "3 contacts deleted, 1 skipped". A skipped record is not an error; somebody else may have deleted that person before you.

There is no separate route for bulk deletion: every record passes through the same permission gate as a single deletion, and each deletion is written to the audit trail on its own.

To remove a single person, the delete section on the contact card is the better route. See Deleting a contact.

Limits and known issues

Bulk tagging handles at most 500 contacts per run. Above that the screen says "max 500 at a time" and reports how many were updated; repeat the action for the rest.
At most 10 tags can be applied in one action, and each tag can be at most 40 characters.
A contact can hold at most 50 tags. On a contact at that ceiling no new tag is added.
Bulk deletion removes at most 200 contacts per run. Because a selection is limited to the visible page anyway, that ceiling is not reached in practice.
Deletion does not work in select all matching mode; the button is disabled.
The Awaiting our reply filter is not applied in "select all matching" (see the note above).
Contacts outside your scope never enter the action; this is a silent exclusion, not a visible error.

A worked example

At the start of a season, a training centre separates out last term's students:

Under Filters they pick Tag: student and Quiet for 90 days, then press Apply.
The list shows 260 people.
They press Select contacts and tap Select all 260 matching in the bar.
They type past_term in the tag box and press Add tag.
The bar says "260 contacts updated."
Then they type student in the box and press Remove tag; the active student list is now clean.

Two moves segment two hundred and sixty people, and announcements meant for current students stop reaching former ones.

Common mistakes

Pressing the button before typing a tag. The buttons are disabled while the box is empty.
Confusing the filter dropdown with the tag box. The Tag list in the filter panel narrows the list; the box in the bar applies a tag. They are two different fields.
Expecting a selection to survive paging. Changing page clears it.
Trying to delete in "select all matching" mode. The button is disabled, and deliberately so.
Forgetting that bulk tagging triggers automations. Check your rules before tagging hundreds of people.
Assuming an over-limit run finished. Above 500, read the result text and repeat for the rest.

If a bulk action updated fewer people than you expected, review the limits above or get in touch with our Support team.