Managing Tags
Tags are the loosest, fastest way to group contacts - donor, volunteer, board member, met-at-the-conference. No schema decision, no field to create, just a label you stick on people.
Because they're so easy to add, they're also the thing most likely to sprawl. This screen is where you keep the vocabulary tidy.
Applying tags
Tags go on from the contact record or in bulk from the contacts grid — not from Settings. Settings is for managing the list itself.
The tag list
Settings > Tags shows every tag in the workspace and how many contacts carry each one. The counts are the useful part: a tag on 400 people is doing work, and a tag on one person is usually a typo of a tag on 400 people.
Occasionally you'll see a note that we're recounting — "We're staying late for inventory! All tags and counts are being double checked." The counts are being recalculated and will settle shortly. Nothing is wrong.
Deleting a tag
Use Delete tag to remove one from the workspace. It comes off every contact carrying it. The contacts themselves are untouched — you're removing the label, not the people.
Deleting is the right fix for a misspelling or a duplicate. Before you do it, check whether any saved views or filters rely on that tag, since those will quietly stop matching.
While an import is running
Tag actions are paused during a contact import — you'll see Import in progress instead of the buttons. Imports create and apply tags in bulk, so editing the list mid-run would be editing a moving target. Wait for it to finish.
Keeping tags useful
A few habits that keep a tag list worth having:
- Settle on singular or plural and stick to it.
donoranddonorsas separate tags help nobody. - Use tags for things that are true for a while, and custom fields for things with values. "Volunteer" is a tag; "Volunteer hours: 40" is a custom field.
- Prune quarterly. The counts on this screen make it obvious what's dead.
Related
- Custom Fields
- Managing, Filtering and Viewing Contacts