# A few questions about batch moving or deleting topics

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/a-few-questions-about-batch-moving-or-deleting-topics/88520
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [May 26, 2018, 7:29pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/a-few-questions-about-batch-moving-or-deleting-topics/88520 "2018-05-26T19:29:34Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 3

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### Author: ![Canapin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/canapin/32/119591_2.png) [@Canapin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Canapin)
#### Post date: [May 27, 2018, 1:38pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/a-few-questions-about-batch-moving-or-deleting-topics/88520/3 "2018-05-27T13:38:36Z")

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Hi, thank you for your reply.

Which file(s) should I modify? Is such a modification quick and straightforward or does it need work to be functional?

If I can avoid re-importing my forum I’d prefer though.

Also, I noticed that after moving some posts with `Topic.where(category_id: XX).update_all(category_id: YY)` the number of messages was not updated and it seems that it couldn’t be either from sidekiq tasks. Also, it moved the “about this category” topic which can’t be deleted.

I guess this is a more proper way to do so: [https://meta.discourse.org/t/best-way-to-combine-merge-categories-when-importing-topics/21353/6](https://meta.discourse.org/t/best-way-to-combine-merge-categories-when-importing-topics/21353/6) but it doesn’t tell me how to properly delete all messages from a category, just how to move them.

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