How do I filter to exclude a label?

[Alex Bea]

I'm having trouble using the JQL syntax to exclude a single label from a Greenhopper board. I get errors when trying to use "labels !~ theming" and "labels != theming" returns no results (because of most returning NULL for labels, I think). "Theming" is the label I'm excluding in this example, and in real life.

What is the syntax to exclude only a single label from a board using filters?

[Dave · Accepted solution]

Hi Alex,

I just gave this a try with project=project AND (labels != 'test' OR labels is EMPTY) and was able to pull up all issues in my project except those with the test label. Give this a try and let us know how it goes.

Thanks,

-dave

[Alex Bea]

Looks like that did it! I'd tried NULL rather than Empty. Thank, Dave.

[Felix Zimmermann]

From the future I would like to thank you for your awesome solution. Thanks, Dave!

[Seif Eldin Serag]

You're my hero. Thank you

[Dorian Workman]

Worked!  Thanks.

[Robert Deao]

Thanks for posting answer David, exactly what I was looking for!

[Thomas Papougnot]

Thanks for the tips !

[Saskia Kaaks]

Thanks!

[Shweta Mane]

Really Helpful. I was exactly looking for this.

[Marianne van Donselaar]

Thank you!! Really helpful!

[gautamb]

But wouldnt this exclude labels that are Empty. What if I just wanted to exclude the issues having that particular label

[Geoffrey Kirk]

Perfect!  Thanks!

[Tuarn McInerney]

Worked like a charm, Cheers

[Daniel Luevano]

if you want to do this with more than one label, you need to add the is EMPTY value for every label?

I have something like this:

project = "[PROJECT]" AND status in (Open, "In Progress", Reopened) AND (labels!= postponed OR labels is EMPTY) AND (labels !=testing_functionality_ignore OR labels is EMPTY)

but if you want to exclude 40 labels?

[Ollie Blacklock]

I think this works:

project = "[PROJECT]" AND status in (Open, "In Progress", Reopened) AND (labels not in (label1,label2,...,label40) OR labels is EMPTY)

[Ryan Bullock]

Adding the first solution twice worked for me. So if my two labels I want to exclude are project and systemupgrade:

...AND (labels != project OR labels is EMPTY) AND (labels != systemupgrade OR labels is EMPTY)...

[Denis Howe]

Ollie's solution is shorter and works for me.

[Roger]

I have following problem with labels, because a story can have multiple lables and I would like to filter the following

Story 1 - Label A, B, C, D

Story 2 - Label A, D

Story 3 - Label A, B, E

=> select alle story which NOT have label A or B -> expected result Story 1 and 2

if i enter "Label not in (A, B)" then none of the above stories appears as result.

[Prashant Sultania]

Hello @Roger 

You can use following JQL to filter it

project = "Project name" AND issuetype = Story AND (labels != label A OR labels != label B)

This will give you the expected result.

[Denis Howe]

You might think that

labels not in (...)

means "labels does not include any of ...", which would obviously be true for tickets with no labels.

But actually it seems to be interpreted as "labels includes (only) items not in ...".

I guess it's consistent with "x not in (...)" where "x" is a simple value rather than a set, where it means "x has some value other than ..." but it's very unintuitive.