Organize with tags

Before you start

• An item to file, or one already on the board.

Steps

1. Type a tag into the tag box

   Every item — in the composer or the editor — has a Tags box at the foot. Type a name and press space. Tab, Enter and a comma commit one too, and pasting #work, #home lands both.

   The # is optional going in and is never stored: it is how a tag is *written*, which is why the chips put it back. A name you already have resolves to that tag; one you do not is created on save.

2. Filter the board by one

   Tags are listed down the rail with a count beside each. Clicking one shows only its items — and anything you write while you are in there is tagged with it automatically.

3. Rename or recolour in the tag drawer

   The edit link beside the rail’s Tags heading opens the drawer. Rename, pick a colour, or delete — a rename carries every item with it, because the items name a tag rather than a spelling.

   There is no *add* here, and that is not an oversight. See the next step.

4. Know that empty tags disappear

   When a save leaves a tag with no items on it, the tag is deleted. That is why there is nowhere to make an empty one: it would be swept away before you used it.

   Deleting a tag in the drawer does not delete its items — they simply stop being filed under it.

What happens next

• Each tag is a view down the rail with a live count of the items on it.
• Tags also arrive by text: #work in a message files the note under it and creates the tag if it is new.
• An item’s tags travel with it in a data export, by name as well as by id, so they still mean something somewhere else.

If something goes wrong

Each row is what you see on screen. Symptoms are worded the way the app words them, so the sentence in front of you should be findable on this page.

There is no button to create a tag

Correct. Type the name into an item’s tag box instead. The drawer’s empty state says the same thing.

A tag vanished

The last item on it stopped naming it — untagged, deleted, or re-tagged. Typing the name again makes it afresh, though the colour you had chosen will not come back.

You cannot type a space inside a tag name

Space is what commits a tag, so a name cannot contain one. Use a hyphen or an underscore: follow-up.

Two spellings turned out to be the same tag

Deliberate — tags are matched loosely enough that case and punctuation differences resolve to one tag, which is what stops #Work and #work becoming two.

A colour picked in the drawer is not showing

Tag colours are the one colour a theme does not restate, but a very pale colour picked on the dark board can be hard to see on the light one. Pick something with more contrast.

Next

• Hashtags become tags — Write #work in a text or a dump and the note is filed under that tag. The exact rules, and what is deliberately not a hashtag.
• Put something in the sack — The box at the top of the board, the four kinds of item, and the two keystrokes worth knowing.
• Find things on the board — Search, sort, the rail’s views, and the counts beside them. What search can and cannot see.

Still stuck? Email [email protected] and tell us what the screen said. All the help articles are at Help.