Board Filter - hiding items with a specific label

[Adam Klug]

I am trying to hide certain items from my backlog by using the Labels field and marking them as "Archived". 

Filter: project = ProjectA AND labels != Archived ORDER BY Rank ASC

When I update my board filter so that it doesn't include items with this label, it seems to also hide any item that does not have any label (i.e. it is only showing items that have a label, as long as the label isn't "Archived"). 

Is there a way to configure the filter so that it hides items with a specific label but still shows items that do not have any label?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

Yes, this is an odd one.  It is logically correct, but most humans do not tend to think this way naturally and when you first run into it, it does seem odd.

For any field that could have multiple selections, "is not X" means what it says - exclude things that have X in their list.  But if the list is empty, there's nothing to check, so it can't check that X is in the list.

Humans instinctively see an empty list as automatically not containing X, so we expect to see the empty ones returned as well, but actually, the question is not answerable, so Jira has to ignore it.

TLDR:  The fix is to explicitly state it:

Filter: project = ProjectA AND (labels != Archived or labels is empty) ORDER BY Rank ASC

[Adam Klug]

Ah yes I should have thought of that.

Thank you for the quick response!

[Agnes Riley]

That doesn't work for me, because there are multiple labels and I just want to hide 'archived'.

[Danielle Harper]

I have the same problem. I want to hide backlog items with  just out of 5 labels we use

[Daniel Pandza]

Hi,

You can make a list of labels like for example:

project = VOY AND ((labels not in (by_sentry, by_sentry_test)) or labels is empty)