How to add and edit Trello labels
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In order for you to get the most out of your Trello boards, you need to be using labels so in this video we're going to start with the basics and work our way up to some more advanced techniques so you can get the most out of Trello labels.
Now when you first create a Trello board, you're not going to have any labels applied. So let's start off by finding out where we go to both edit and access our labels. First off, we can go to show menu and then select more and then the second option is going to be, you guessed it, labels.
And here we can see all of the labels that are available to us. Now again, on a fresh Trello board, we're not going to have any titles listed here, but let's go ahead and start adding some so we can get started.
So to the right of each of these colors, you will see a little stylus and if I select this, I can now give this green label a name. So maybe I'm going to call this HR in terms of human resources. I'm going to then hit save.
Now I've got that title associated with this particular label. Let's give another label a name here. This time I'm going to select yellow. So I'm going to give this one maybe a priority level so maybe I want yellow to mean medium priority in this case so I can enter that here into the text field.
If I want to change the color, I can do so here as well, but I'm going to save it as just this yellow in this particular case. Now you're not limited to just the six different colors that we see here, nor are you required to add a title.
Maybe I just want to use red to distinguish some of my cards from others. I don't necessarily have to give it a title, but the nice thing is is that we can search our labels if we do give them a title.
And if we do need to add more labels, we can just come down here and select create a new label
Viewing labels within a card
and then we can add some additional colors as well. But of course, this is not the only place that we can go in order to access our labels. We can open up any of our Trello cards and here in the top right-hand corner, we have the labels button.
So if I select this, we are basically presented with the exact same menu. Now in this case, I can also use this to apply my label. So if I want to add the HR label to this card, I can then select it and now you can see it's going to appear here.
Now when there is at least a minimum of one label applied to a card, you will see this plus button right next to that label. So here I can select the plus button instead of using the label button and now I can access my other labels here as well.
And if I want to remove any of these labels that have been applied, I can just click on them and it will also bring up this menu where I can make adjustments. And keep in mind, you can add as many labels to a card as you like.
Quick ways to access Trello labels
But let's stick with accessing our labels and I want to show you maybe the easiest way to bring up the label menu and that is when you are hovering over a particular card. Let's say that this card here, hire a new HR assistant, that certainly sounds like an HR activity.
So I want to be able to quickly and easily bring up my labels menu.
What I could do is select this stylus in the top right-hand corner and this will open up sort of a mini menu here where I can select edit labels. And yes, I can add the HR label and hit save. That was rather quick and I didn't have to open up the entire card,
but let me go over here and just remove that for a second and I'm going to show you an even simpler way.
Here all I have to do is hover over that card and then select L on my keyboard. Yes, L for label and that will immediately bring up my label menu
so now I can access that HR label and apply it directly here. If I want to go over here and add a label to review these docs, I can again hit L on my keyboard. That will immediately bring up my labels and now I can apply whichever labels that I like.
Now once you start to become more familiar with your labels, there's an even easier way for you to quickly add and access your labels on each of your cards. Let me open up the labels menu here just for a second so you can see our labels in order.
You'll notice that we have green, yellow, orange, red, purple and blue and this is the default order of your label colors for any new Trello board. But this order can be helpful because the keys on your keyboard, the numeric keys, also correspond to these colors.
So for example, green is one, yellow is two, orange is three and so on.
So if I want to quickly and easily add that HR label to this card as well, all I have to do
is select the number one on my keyboard and it is added. If I want to remove this green label, I can just select one again and it will be removed. Maybe I want to add the first three labels to this card.
All I have to do is select one, two and three on my keyboard and they are immediately all applied. So you may want to get to know these quick keys, at least the most common labels and what numbers they are associated with.
As long as you are hovered over them, you can add or remove them just by using those numeric keys.
Expanding Trello labels
Last but not least, what can be very helpful when dealing with labels is actually seeing the labels on the top of the card. Now by default, we are limited to just these color strips as you see here.
But what if you forget what this green label actually means? Instead of having to open up the card and saying, oh, that's right, green means HR and yellow means medium, there's a much easier way.
Here within our board view, all we need to do is actually click directly on any of our labels and it will expand them for the entire board. Now we can see medium and HR and if we end up giving this orange label a name, we'll see it here on the front of the card.
So this may be a much easier way for you to deal with your Trello boards and actually see those labels. Now don't worry if you or a member of your team ever make a mistake and apply the wrong labels to a bunch of Trello cards and you don't have the time to manually remove them, you can use Rewind Backups to quickly restore your board.
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Color blind friendly labels
So you will also see at the very bottom of our labels menu, we have the ability to enable color blind friendly mode. So if you would like to distinguish your labels that much more, you can select this option.
Here you can see that the colors remain, but there are some additional shapes or patterns which are added to the labels to help give them a bit more distinction, especially for those who may experience color blindness.
Trello label examples and use cases
Now that you know how to create, edit and add and remove labels to your cards,
let's take a look at a few useful examples. So in this case, I'm going to go back to our labels menu here and I'm going to make a few changes. The first thing I want to do is create some urgency or a priority level for my label.
So for example, maybe the red label I want to be a high priority so I'm going to type in the word high and I'm going to hit save.
Orange perhaps I'm going to change and I'm going to make that one the medium priority and then the yellow I'm going to edit and make it a low priority so I'm going to use this to distinguish, you know, what's important and what is less important on my particular boards.
I can keep HR as green here, but maybe I'm going to come down to my purple label and I'm going to label this as sales, for example. And maybe the blue, I'm going to say is part of my support team and I'm going to hit save there.
So now I've got a combination of both departments, but also urgency as well. So let's go back to some of my examples here. I can't have something that is both medium and low priority so let me open up my labels menu here and I'm going to say that this is actually a medium priority.
Over here I'm going to say that this is a high priority and it's part of the support team. I'm going to say that this is also a high priority. This time it's part of the sales team and let's maybe do one more here.
This isn't assigned to a department. I'm going to say that this is assigned to the sales team as well. So now you can see we have a mix of labels,
both priorities, but also the departments in which they are assigned to or which they are attributed to. Why is this helpful?
Filter cards by labels
Well, here in the top right-hand corner, we have the option to filter our cards. And labels is one of the best ways in which we can filter the information on any Trello board. So here I'm going to select filter and about halfway down, you can see that we have this labels option down below.
So for example, maybe I just want to quickly and easily see all of the cards which are assigned to HR. I'm going to check this checkbox
and it's only going to bring back those two cards. Now in today's example, we only have about a dozen cards in which we are dealing with, but you very well may be dealing with a board that has hundreds of different cards with many, many different labels.
So this can be a great way for us to filter out that information. Next up, maybe I want to add another label to match my filter so maybe I don't only want to see things
that are matching HR, but I want to see everything that HR has that is also a medium priority so I can select this option here as well. Now you may notice that this one did not go away.
That's because at the bottom of our filter menu, we have the choice to use either any match which is what we have set right now so anything that has HR or a medium priority. But if I come down here and select exact match, now you can see we only have the one card which matches both HR and medium.
So make sure that you take a look at this last option, depending on what you are looking for. Whenever you want to be able to clear a filter, all you need to do is come up here and select this X and you'll go back to your normal state or your primary view of your Trello board.
Trello card covers
Now in addition to labels, there is another way in which we can help distinguish
certain cards on our boards and that has to do with applying a cover. When you open up any card within Trello, on the right-hand side you will notice that there is a cover button. By selecting this option we see many of the same colors that we saw within our labels menu, but a card cover acts and behaves a little bit differently,
but may be suitable for your needs. Now here in the top, it's going to show us
how that cover is going to look. Either we can have a single strip of color at the top of the card or we can make the entire card the color that we choose down below. So let's go with something a little bold and I'm going to select this red.
Now by default, it's going to choose this red color here. Now when the card is open, you're going to see it at the top. But if I go back to my board view. Here you can see that that red spans the entire length of the top of that card.
So no matter where I move this particular card, it's really going to stand out. Let's keep with this particular card
and now that we've applied a cover, you will notice that that cover is no longer available to us here in the add to card section. We actually have to come up to the top and select cover.
By doing so, we can choose the second option which is going to make the entire card red. Now it's not going to make any difference here when we are viewing the inside contents of the Trello card, but when we close it, now you can see that entire card is now red and even the text is a little bit larger and bolder.
This is ideal if you want to create a section break or maybe create a header at the top of your Trello lists. The downside is it will not show other card details on the front such as a due date or a member assignment or other things as you see here.
But again, if you'd like to use this as a header or as a section break, this can be a great idea. Now if you want to remove your cover, all we need to do is come back over here and here we can say remove cover and we will go back to the default.
In addition to just adding a color cover, you can also upload your very own cover image or maybe search for an image online. So in this case, if I really want to spruce things up, I can have this cover image on the front of my card. So a lot of flexibility, an additional way
in which you can segment and highlight certain cards on your boards.
Secret hidden labels
Lastly, let's take a look at a secret or special label that even some of the most advanced Trello users do not know exist. In some cases you may want to apply a label that does not necessarily show up on the front of your cards here, but you may still want to be able to filter or search for that label.
So let's open up our labels menu here in this particular example. Here at the very bottom, I'm going to select create a new label. And what you may notice is the very last option we have available to us is this gray label and it has no color, meaning that it won't show up on the front of our cards.
So in this case, I'm going to call this one a special label and I'm going to say create. Here you can see I've actually applied this special label to this particular card,
but you will notice that that label does not show up on the front of the card. If I open it up, you can see that yes indeed, that label has been applied and I can go over here and I can apply that label to other cards as well, but they will not show up on the front of my card.
So if you want to segment out your cards or maybe tag your cards without having them interfere with your other existing labels, you may want to apply the special and secret gray label.
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