Tip to remove incorrect tags in Windows Live Photo Gallery

If you use Windows Live Photo Gallery like I do to manage your photos, the ability to add tags to photos is a very useful feature. Even better, in Windows Vista and 7, those tags get indexed by the system, so searching for photos becomes even easier. For example, if you tagged “mom” in a photo and search for “mom”, the tagged photos will come up, irrespective of what their actual file name is. However, there is one small problem with this, a human problem: spelling mistakes! 🙂

Sometimes you can tag a photo correctly but with incorrect spelling, with the result that the incorrect tag is now in the list of predefined possible tags for other photos. These appear in the drop down menu when adding tags, and there is no way to remove them from this list, at least not in the application itself. However, there is a way to correct this using the Registry Editor. Do as follows, but make sure you are comfortable working in the Registry first.

• Click on Start, and type in Regedit in the search bar (Windows Vista and 7), or Start, Run, Regedit (Windows XP)
• Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows Live\Photo Gallery\Library\PreviewPane\LabelAssignment\MRU
• Delete the offending tag from the various registry keys
• Since this is based on the Current User Hive in the Registry, deleting tags here won’t affect other the tags of other users on the same computer.

This won’t remove the tag from tagged photos, but will remove the tag from the predefined options so that you don’t use it again in the future. You can remove the incorrect tag from the photos and apply new correct tags to them.

This tip also works with the standard Windows Photo Gallery in Windows Vista, but the main key is Windows Photo Gallery instead (not 100% sure, been a long time since I looked. Still, you should see it pretty quickly)