18. Set a Color Label  BEFORE YOU BEGIN 15 Rename a Folder or Document 17 Change an Icon
 SEE ALSO 11 Find a File 14 Create a Smart Folder That Contains Certain Types of Items
In Mac OS X, you can assign different colored "labels" to documents and folders. The meanings of these labels are up to you to definea blue label might mean "Incomplete projects" or "Items I haven't looked at yet," and red labels might signify "Documents from the Thompson account." Labels appear in the highlight color of an item's name , in an oval around the text. You can sort items in the Finder based on the label color, allowing you to group items conceptually without having to fiddle with their names or put them into folders. You can also use the color label as a search criterion in a Spotlight search or Smart Folder. 18. Set a Color Label 
| 1. | Select the Item In a Finder window, select the item you want to label.  TIP You can label multiple items at once. Select as many items as you want, using the Shift or Command key in conjunction with mouse clicks, and then set the label color. | | 2. | Set the Label Color
From the File menu or the Action button menu, choose the Color Label you want to use. Seven colors are available to choose from; click the appropriate colored dot. You can also set the label by right-clicking (or Control +clicking) the item and selecting the label color from the contextual menu.
| | 3. | Sort by Label in Icon View In the Finder's Icon view, you can sort items by label color. After you have set different colored labels for several items within a folder, select View, View Options . In the View Options panel that opens, select the Keep arranged by check box and select Label from the drop-down menu to group items by their assigned label colors. TIP In Icon view, choose View, Arrange and then choose by Label to arrange the contents of a folder immediately into a well-organized grid sorted by the files' labels. | | 4. | Sort by Label in List View You can also sort items by label colors in the Finder's list view. First make sure that the Label column is shown by opening the View Options panel (choose View, View Options ) and selecting the Label check box. Then, in the Finder window, scroll to the far right of the window and click the Label column heading to sort the list based on the assigned colors. TIP You can also make use of color labels when finding files. While building a Spotlight search in the Finder or creating a Smart Folder, create a criterion based on the Label ; you can then specify which color labels you want to look for, or which ones you want to avoid (using the is not clause). Create as many of these criteria as necessary to match the correct files. | | 5. | View Sorted Results
Although these examples are shown in black and white, the names of the label colors in the Finder's list view show how easily you can sort items in a folder based on label colors.
| | 6. | Remove the Label
To clear a label you don't need anymore, select the item with the colored label you want to remove. From the File menu or the Action button menu, click the X under the Color Label option to remove the color. You can also access the Color Label options by right-clicking (or Control +clicking) to open the contextual menu.
You can assign special meanings to the various color labels. In the Finder Preferences , click the Labels tab; then, next to each color, type a new name for each label. For instance, you might make red signify "Overdue," and yellow signify "In-progress," to help you keep track of documents that you're working on over a long period of time. Without color labels, writing the chapters of this book would have been much more difficult!
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