built without wearing resident tag

I guess I made a real newbie error i spent time yesterday building stuff it took a while and then later i realised i wasnt wearing my resident tag (not active)- my rented land is set to disabled return of items so my work is still in place - later i realised my error and i'm dismayed as i want to activate the return of items to stop others messing with the land but when i do all my work will be returned!

My question is: could i while wearing my resident tag go to my work and just highlight each prim in turn within edit but then not actually move or edit it and then quit edit? would this mean that the prims would then have been recorded as having been put there by me as resident (or do you have to actually *rez* them as resident?)

sorry for the long post

I believe one thing you could do to prevent new items being created on your land from this point forward is to check the create items box to "Group" instead of all residents in your About land>settings window.

Other than that, you could try selecting all the objects and hitting take. It will take the objects as one grouped object to inventory. Then pull the box that is the group of objects back out of inventory with your resident tag on. But doublecheck with someone else before you try this...it's just a theory.

if you edit your objects you can set them to any group youre a member of.
this will have the same effect as wearing the group tag while builing.

edit>group (set button)

Like Nina said, all you have to do is highlight all of your prims, go to edit, and you'll see a button near the top that says 'Set Group...' change that to your desired group.

I hate to admit it but that is not really just a newbie error.

im often setting up hippovends around the place and quite often i forget to wear the tag (or forget which is the right one) and get my vends autoreturned to me.
this was especially annoying when id forget to wear my tag in my own workshop. not long ago i found a single prim called the 'group tag reminder' as a freebie. you rez it wherever and when you come back later it will tell you if you are not wearing the group tag it is set to. it has saved me numerous times. i now keep one at the workshop, one at the store, and one at each of my various rental plots.
you can get the group tag reminder (and other wickedly awesome freebies) at crystal gadgets:
Crystal Gadgets, Babeli (128, 128, 22)

many many thanks for your advice all who posted i really appreciate your help and I have done as advised and it looks to have worked - i'll check out that reminder gadget for sure!!