Finding resources to tag

With Tag Editor, you build a query to find resources in one or more AWS Regions that are available for tagging. You can choose up to 20 individual resource types, or build a query on All resource types. Your query can include resources that already have tags, or resources that have no tags. For more information, see the Tag Editor Tagging column at Supported resource types in the AWS Resource Groups User Guide.

After you find resources to tag, you can use Tag Editor to add tags, or view, edit, or delete tags.

To find resources to tag

1. Open the Tag Editor console.

2. (Optional) Choose the AWS Regions in which to search for resources to tag. By default, your current Region is used. For this procedure, choose us-east-1 and us-west-2.

3. Choose at least one resource type from the Resource types dropdown list. You can add or edit tags for up to 20 individual resource types at a time, or choose All resource types. For this procedure, choose AWS::EC2::Instance and AWS::S3::Bucket.

4. (Optional) In the Tags fields, enter a tag key, or a tag key and value pair, to limit the resources in the current AWS Region to only those that are tagged with your specified values. As you type a tag key, matching tag keys in the current Region appear in a list below. You can choose a tag key from the list. Tag Editor auto-completes the tag key for you as you type enough characters to match an existing key. Choose Add or press Enter when you've finished your tag. In this example, filter for resources that have a tag key of Stage. The tag value is optional but narrows the results of the query further. To add more tags, choose Add. Queries assign an AND operator to tags, so only resources that match both the specified resource type and all specified tags are returned by the query.

   Note

   The Tag Editor console doesn't currently support wildcards.

   To find resources with multiple values for a tag key, add another tag with the same key to the query, but specify a different value. The results include all resources that are tagged with the same tag key and that have any of the selected values. The search is case sensitive.

   Leave the Tags boxes empty to find all resources of the specified type in the selected AWS Regions. This query returns resources that have any tags, and includes those that have no tags. To remove a tag from your query, choose X on the tag's label.

   To find resources that have a tag, but with an empty value, choose (empty value), as shown below, when your cursor is in the tag value box.

   

   Note

   Before you can find resources with the specified tags, they must have been applied to at least one resource of the specified type in the current AWS Region.

5. When your query is ready, choose Search resources. Results are displayed as a table in the Resource search results area.

   To filter a large number of resources, enter any filter text, such as part of the name of a resource, in Filter resources.

   Note

   You can use substrings to filter your results.

6. (Optional) To configure the columns that Tag Editor displays in your resource search results, choose the Preferences gear icon in the Resource search results.

   On the Preferences page, choose the number of rows that you want displayed in your search results. If you'd like to see all the text in the table, select the Wrap lines check box.

   Turn on columns that you want Tag Editor to display in your results. You can show a column for each tag that occurs in your search results or a selected subset of your search results. You can do this anytime after you find resources to tag. To enable a column, choose the switch icon next to the tag and change it from off to on .

   When you are finished configuring visible columns and number of displayed rows, choose Confirm.

View and edit tags for a selected resource

Tag Editor shows you the existing tags on selected resources that are in the results of your Find resources to tag query.

If you enabled any Tag columns as described in the previous section, you can see the current value of that tag for each resource in the search results.

Note

This topic explains how to edit the tag for an individual resource. You can also bulk edit tags for several selected resources at the same time. For more information, see Managing tags with Tag Editor.

To edit tags inline in the search results table

1. Choose the value for the tag on the resource that you want to edit.

   Note

   • If the chosen resource currently does not have a tag with the chosen key, the value displays as (not tagged).

   • If the chosen resource does have a tag with the chosen key but without a value, the value displays as '–'.

   In the following example, the column for the tag Env and with the current value of Prod was chosen.

   

2. You can enter a new value or choose from any of the values already present on other resources with this tag. You can also delete the tag from this one resource by choosing Remove tag.

To view all tags for an individual resource

1. In the results of your Find resources to tag query, choose the number in the Tags column for any resource for which you want to view existing tags. Resources with a dash in the Tags column do not have existing tags.

2. View existing tags in Resource tags. You can also open this window by choosing Manage tags of selected resources, when you're changing or removing tags from the Manage tags page.

   Note

   If you don’t see a tag that you recently applied to a resource, try refreshing your browser window.

Export results to .csv file

You can export the results of a Find resources to tag query to a comma-separated values (.csv) file. The .csv file includes the resource names, services, Region, resource IDs, the total number of tags, and a column for each unique tag key in the collection. The .csv file can help you develop a tagging strategy for resources in your organization, or determine where there are overlaps or inconsistencies in tagging across resources.

1. In the results of your Find resources to tag query, choose Export resources to CSV.

2. When you're prompted by your browser, choose to open the .csv file, or save it to a convenient location.

Related information

• Using cost allocation tags in the AWS Billing User Guide