Tagging is disabled until an admin enables it under Setup. Here is how to turn on Personal and Public Tags and make them usable on records in Salesforce Classic.
- Open Tag Settings
From Setup, type Tag Settings in the Quick Find box and select Tag Settings. This is where you control which tag types your org allows.
- Enable the tag types you want
Turn on Personal Tags for private labeling. To allow Public Tags, enable that option too. If the Public Tags option is missing, it has not been activated for your org and you submit an activation request to Salesforce first.
- Add tags to page layouts
Choose which objects show a tag section, so users can apply tags directly on Account, Contact, Opportunity, and other record detail pages.
- Grant Tag Manager where needed
Assign the Tag Manager permission to the small group of admins or power users who should be able to rename and delete public tags across the org.
Private labels visible only to the user who created them. Each user gets up to 500 unique personal tags and 5,000 applied instances.
Labels visible to the whole org, creating a shared searchable vocabulary. May need a Salesforce activation request before the option appears.
Required to rename or delete any public tag. Personal tags can always be renamed or deleted by their own creator without it.
An optional Classic sidebar link that opens the Tags page for browsing and searching tags by name, frequency, or recency.
- The classic tagging UI is a Salesforce Classic feature and did not carry into Lightning Experience in the same form. On Lightning, consider Personal Labels, list views, reports, or topics instead.
- Tags are free text with no validation, so near-duplicates like "follow up" and "follow-up" pile up fast. Agree on a naming convention before a team starts tagging.
- Public Tags is not on by default in every edition and can require an activation request to Salesforce before it appears under Tag Settings.
- Tags are unreliable for reporting because the values are not controlled. Use a picklist or custom field when you need clean, reportable data.