Bulk actions on contacts
Selection mode, the sticky action bar, adding and removing tags in bulk, selecting everyone who matches the filter, and bulk deletion.
Last updated: September 30, 2026
Selection mode, the sticky action bar, adding and removing tags in bulk, selecting everyone who matches the filter, and bulk deletion.
Last updated: September 30, 2026
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:
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.
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:
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.
vip, hot lead.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.
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.
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.
Bulk deletion permanently removes the selected people together with all their messages and notes. It cannot be undone.
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.
At the start of a season, a training centre separates out last term's students:
past_term in the tag box and press Add tag.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.
If a bulk action updated fewer people than you expected, review the limits above or get in touch with our Support team.
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