Thanks for your question. I want to make sure I understand what you’d like to do. You wrote “I made all my image categories Media Library Assistant categories.” I assume that means you are using MLA’s “Att. Categories” (attachment_category) taxonomy for your assigned terms (categories); is that right?
Your goal is to assign the same terms to the items using the WordPress “Categories” (category) taxonomy; is that right?
Using the WordPress Categories taxonomy for Media Library items may give you unanticipated results. For example, Media Library items will not be included in “category archives” pages. Also, the “Count” column in the Categories taxonomy edit screen will not include the items. WordPress has lots of core code that specifically excludes Media Library items from taxonomy-related features. Just be thoughtful regarding how and why you want to combine items with posts/pages in this taxonomy.
I also want to clarify what you mean by “same categories“. Matching a term assigned in the Att. Categories taxonomy to an existing term in the Categories taxonomy can be done using one of two values – the term Name or the term Slug (you can see both values on the taxonomy edit screen). For most applications using the term Name is fine, but there can be problems if the Name has been used more than once (e.g., same Name for a child term under multiple parent terms) in a hierarchical taxonomy, e.g., Categories. Make sure this isn’t a problem for your applicaton.
MLA includes the “MLA Insert Fixit” example plugin, which has some tools for copying terms between parent posts/pages and their attached Media Library items. If they can help your application, great. I assume they won’t give you the results you need, though. I would be happy to evaluate the work required to add a tool to copy terms for the item itself between taxonomies if that’s what you need.
I will leave this topic unresolved for now. Let me know if I have understood your question and if you want me to look into adding a tool to accomplish your goal. Thanks for your interest in MLA.
