tags

👋 Hi ​@mattman, welcome to the Box Community! Great questions, and you’re right, they’re deceptively simple but have some important nuances! Here’s a clear breakdown of both:

✅ Question 1: How to create a pre-populated tag for your team

Box’s Tags feature allows users to manually add tags to files, but Box does not support a native “pre-populated tag list” that forces users to choose from a dropdown of pre-defined tags. However, here’s how the tag system works and how you can get close to what you’re describing:

How tags work in Box

• Tags are free-text labels you add to files/folders.
• To tag an item: Hover over the file → click the ellipsis (…) → More Options → Add or Edit Tags → type your tag(s) → Save.
• Tags display below the item name and are searchable/filterable.

Getting “Pre-Populated” Behavior

Box does offer autofill for tags in the search view — when a user starts typing a tag, Box will suggest existing tags for content they own. This means:

• If you (or an admin) tag a few files with your desired tag values (e.g., "Reviewed", "Pending Review", “Approved”), those tags will autofill for users on content they own.
• ⚠️ Important caveat: Box does NOT autofill tags that belong to content the user does not own or content on which they collaborate. So autofill is limited to owned content.

Restricting tag creation (Admin control)

• By default, any user can create new tags.
• A Box Admin can restrict tag creation so that only Admins and Co-Admins can create new tags. This effectively locks down the tag vocabulary to only what admins have pre-created.
• To do this: Admin Console → Enterprise Settings → Content & Sharing → Content Creation → restrict tag creation.
• Even with this restriction, users can still see and use existing tags to search/filter — they just can’t create new ones.

💡 Best approach for your use case

If you want a true pre-populated, controlled list that your team selects from during a review process, the better Box feature to use would be a Metadata Template with a Dropdown field:

• Go to Admin Console → Metadata Templates → Create a new template.
• Add a Dropdown attribute (e.g., “Review Status”) with pre-defined options like "Pending", "In Review", "Approved", "Rejected".
• Apply the template to the relevant folder.
• Team members can then select from the dropdown when reviewing files — and this can also be used to trigger Box Relay workflows.

This gives you a true controlled vocabulary, unlike free-text tags.

✅ Question 2: How to search for files that do not have a tag

Box does NOT natively support “No Tag” filtering

Box’s search and filter system allows you to search FOR files with a specific tag, but there is no built-in filter to find files that have NO tag at all. The Tags filter in Box search requires you to enter a specific tag value to match against.

What you can do

1. Search by a specific tag — In Box search, use the Tags filter and enter the tag name. This returns all files with that tag.
2. Use the Tags filter in search — Click the Tags filter in the search bar and enter the tag(s) you want. Box will autofill possible tags (for content you own).
3. Admin Console / Content Manager — Admins can search and filter content, but there is still no “has no tag” filter available.

💡 Workaround Options

• Metadata approach (recommended): If you use a Metadata Template with a required dropdown field (as described above), you can search for files where that metadata field is empty or unset — giving you a functional equivalent of “not yet reviewed.”
• Box Relay workflow: You could set up a workflow that automatically applies a default tag (e.g., “Unreviewed”) to every new file uploaded to a folder. Then searching for “Unreviewed” effectively shows you all files that haven’t been manually reviewed yet.
• Reports: Box Admins can run Folders and Files Reports to get a list of files, which can then be cross-referenced externally — but this doesn’t filter by tag presence natively.

Summary

Please let us know if you have any other concerns.