Any way to NOT send emails when a topic category is changed?

[tshenry (Taylor)]

Changing the category with bulk selection will trigger notifications/emails to users that are watching the destination category. There are a couple options to prevent this:

1. Gather the topic ids and use the rails console to change the category. If there are a lot of topics, you can use the Data Explorer to track down a set of topic ids, otherwise you can get them manually. This method bypasses all notifications/emails.

   Bulk move many topics from one category to another

   If you want to move all the topics from one category to another

   Topic.where(category_id: <from_category_id>).update_all(category_id: <to_category_id>)
   

   where “ <from_category_id> ” is the id of the origin category and “ <to_category_id> ” is the destination category.

   If you want to move some topics from one category to another

   topic_ids = [<topic_id_1>, <topic_id_2>, ...]
   Topic.where(id: topic_ids).update_all(category_id: <to_category_id>)
   

   where “ <topic_id_1>, <topic_id_2>, ... ” is a list of the topic ids you want to move.

   If you execute either of these, category stats will be wrong but should fix themselves after a day.

2. You can bulk unlist the topics in their current category, then move them to the destination category. If the destination category is already well populated, you can append
   ?status=unlisted to the url to find all the topics you just moved. Just make note that any existing unlisted topics will be in that list as well. Finally, bulk select those topics and relist them. This will also avoid notifications/emails

3. Choose a slow time on your forum and temporarily disable emails via the disable_emails site setting. When you move the topics, users that are watching the destination category will receive on-site notifications, but not emails. Make sure to turn emails back on when your are done!

Hope that helps!