# Applying Watched Words to existing posts
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/applying-watched-words-to-existing-posts/294028
**Category:** Support
**Tags:** watched-words
**Created:** [November 17, 2022, 2:30pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/applying-watched-words-to-existing-posts/294028 "2022-11-17T14:30:26Z")
**Posts on this page:** 6
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@vanclute](https://meta.discourse.org/u/vanclute)
#### Post date: [November 17, 2022, 2:30pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/applying-watched-words-to-existing-posts/294028/1 "2022-11-17T14:30:26Z")
I can’t seem to get links to work at all for our new forum. I put in a word, and a link, and it passes the test. But there are already posts on the site with this keyword in them, and they aren’t being converted to a link. Is there something more that needs to be done to enable this feature than just inserting a word and a link?
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### Author:  [@JammyDodger](https://meta.discourse.org/u/JammyDodger)
#### Post date: [November 17, 2022, 2:36pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/applying-watched-words-to-existing-posts/294028/2 "2022-11-17T14:36:58Z")
It will only work on new instances of the word. To linkify the old ones you’d need to rebake those posts.
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### Author:  [@vanclute](https://meta.discourse.org/u/vanclute)
#### Post date: [November 17, 2022, 2:38pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/applying-watched-words-to-existing-posts/294028/3 "2022-11-17T14:38:26Z")
I JUST figured that out, they need to be new or edited. Thanks!
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### Author:  [@JammyDodger](https://meta.discourse.org/u/JammyDodger)
#### Post date: [November 17, 2022, 2:50pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/applying-watched-words-to-existing-posts/294028/4 "2022-11-17T14:50:52Z")
There’s also an option to ‘Rebuild HTML’ in the post wrench menu which will rebuild them with the new rule in place. 👍
To do a significantly large amount you would need to perform a rake task on the server. You can read more about those in [Administrative Bulk Operations](https://meta.discourse.org/t/administrative-bulk-operations/118349)
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### Author:  [@vanclute](https://meta.discourse.org/u/vanclute)
#### Post date: [November 17, 2022, 2:51pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/applying-watched-words-to-existing-posts/294028/5 "2022-11-17T14:51:06Z")
Could I make a request that this optionally allow for targeting a new browser tab? When linking to a totally external destination, this would be nice to be able to choose on a per-link basis (or maybe to be able to set a default globally as well)
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### Author:  [@system](https://meta.discourse.org/u/system)
#### Post date: [February 3, 2024, 8:33am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/applying-watched-words-to-existing-posts/294028/6 "2024-02-03T08:33:22Z")
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