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Labels cannot be deleted

Nik_ljks8q

Hey, everybody.

There is a problem with labels on our project. Initially the project went through a migration from YouTrack and because of this unnecessary priorities were also migrated. However, the priorities can be removed via project administration, but the labels cannot.
I read the documentation and found that labels should be deleted themselves if there are no tasks that contain these labels. I checked several times using different tools (both internal - task list and external - using third party plugins) - there are no tasks with these labels.
I also did deleting the browser cache - none of this helped. Labels still remain.

Is there any other way to get rid of them?

Regards

Nik

Accepted answers

All comments

Manon Soubies-Camy

Hi @Nik and welcome to Community!

A couple of questions:

Are you sure you have permission to view all tasks across your Jira site? It’s possible that some tasks using these labels exist in projects you don’t have access to.
Have you tried this suggested workaround in another Community post?

From my investigation, I achieved to delete completely a label with the following workaround:
1. Find the issues that use this label with a JQL query (labels = <label name>)
2. Bulk change those issues and remove the label with "Find and remove these" option
There are two lists with labels in Jira. The "All Labels" list and the "Recent Labels" list.
Some time after the actions with steps 1 & 2, the label is deleted from the "All Labels" list but still appears in the "Recent Labels" list.
And now the tricky one:
I noticed that the "Recent Labels" list takes max 5 labels that are recycled so only the last 5 used are shown.
So..
3. Use in an issue 5 labels that already exist. Put one label at a time until you reach 5.
The impact is that the "Recent Labels" list is now full with existing labels and the "unwanted" label is now "deleted" from this list also.

Finally, I recommend watching and upvoting this feature request to improve label management in Jira: Improve the way Labels can be deleted in Jira

Hope this helps!

- Manon

Nar Kumar C_ - Narva Software

Hi Nik,

If you removed labels from all issues but they are still visible, mostly there are two causes:

Browser caching: you can clear the browser cache storage
Archived projects: if you have archived projects and labels are used there, these labels are still visible. You can temporarily unarchive the projects and remove labels from issues in those projects. We have tried to document this issue here: Labels from archived projects

These are doc pages in our help center for our app, but you do not need to install it to try these workarounds.

Nik_ljks8q

Hi Nar,

Do you know if these labels should be deleted if I deleted another project from the archive?

Regards

Nik_ljks8q

Hello, dear Manon,

thank you so much for your answer. Through JQL I also searched for labels, there are none.

I had another idea how I can explain what happened. The thing is that when registering, JIRA suggested to create a sample project, and it was very likely that these labels were there. I eventually deleted that project, but the tags were still there.

I see this scheme as follows:
user -> project 1
user -> project 2.

If the labels existed in the first project, they appear in the second project. At the moment deleting the first project and clearing the browser cache doesn't help - I opened my working project from a new browser (incognito tab), it still doesn't work.

Nar Kumar C_ - Narva Software

Yes, they will be gone if you delete the projects. But keep in mind, it will also delete work items, attachments and all the data. If it is a sample project, you can go ahead.

Nik_ljks8q

Many thanks!

Alexey Pavlenko _App Developer_

Hi @Nik ,

Please confirm if you have tried this JQL:

labels != empty

and you have only one labels field.

Also, you can try the app I developed - Heat Map, Projects, Roadmap, Labels. Labels gadget can show all labels across all projects.

Best regards,
Alexey

Nik_ljks8q

Hi Alexey,

thanks for the reply. If I use the query

JQL labels != empty

I see several tasks with labels that were created by me on the project (these are the correct labels). There are no tasks with labels that need to be deleted.

Also thanks a lot for the app and gadgets, I have installed all the gadgets that relate to tags, customized them, also selected “all projects” in one of them, however unnecessary tags are not showing up.

So I keep seeing unnecessary tags only in the tasks on the project, and nowhere else.

So far deleting the another example project has not helped.

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