How do I add custom labels in Contacts?

Not that I know of, you can try reset

Do a reset (Hold Sleep/Wake and Home buttons about 10 secs or more till Apple logo appears)

The options will only appears when Contacts is in EDIT mode and that you tap the label directly to change the label. I'm also using 4S and IOS 5.0.1 so you should be able to change the labels. Tap the LABEL directly.

Once you set up synchronisation to an Exchange server (not sure about other enterprise mail/messaging platforms), your default contact group store is the Exchange contacts list. The contacts synched with Exchange cannot accept custom labels created via the iPhone, so you no longer have the "Create custom label" option.

You can still add custom labels to the contacts that are stored on the iPhone though. However, to store a contact on the iPhone when the phone is synched to Exchange, you have to go into the "Contacts" list, press the "Groups" button in the top left (this will give you options for "All Contacts", "All from my PC", and two Exchange items: "Contacts" and "Exchange Global Address List".

Press the "All from my PC" option, and it will show you any contacts that are stored on the phone instead of in the Exchange server. These contacts can take a custom label. You can add contacts to this list as normal, with the "+" button in the top right.

To add a custom label, click on a Contact, click the "Edit" button in the top right, click on the label that you want to change (the label, NOT the number, email or address), scroll to the bottom of the label list and choose the "Add custom label" option.

One option for adding a custom label may be to add it to a contact through Outlook, but I cannot test this as I only have the web-access version of Outlook while I am out of the office (my default state), and I am 99% sure that this would not work, but it is the only option I can come up with for adding custom labels to Exchange contacts at the moment.

I've run in to this problem with labels when using an Exchange account. Many labels that are available for the Contacts application in Outlook/Exchange are not available in Apple's contacts application. Another issue is contact photos. I've not been able to add a contact photo into my Exchange-synced contacts on my devices by adding it from Apple's contacts app.

To get around these issues, I simply add the photos and other information on my PC at work. Once Exchange syncs the changes with my Apple gear, many (but not all) of the additional information is shown in the Apple contacts app.

I'm having a similar problem and I'm not using exchange. I'm on the iPad Mini and under contacts, if I touched the title field to the left of the phone number, I get a drop down menu for me to select the name of that field but I no longer have the option of adding a custom label. I'm basically stuck with the basics of what is listed in those options and I am no longer able to customize the field to suit my needs. I'm open if anyone has any suggestions to this. It used to be there and I'm very familiar with IOS and Exchange and I'm not using an Exchange server and I'm using the default Contacts app that came with the iPad Mini. I do not even have a 3rd party app on the iPad to manage contacts or any other default IOS program. Thanks in advance if you are the winner of brightening my day!

<Email Edited by Host>

i am also in the same situation i have a iphone 4 & a ipad & on a majority of numbers stored in the phone i can go in & change them to a custom label however there are a few which i can not change i do not see that option to create a custom label , i can only select what is on the phone ? does any one think it could be a App causing the problem ? where do i look in the settings ? i am at a loss here 😟

I have found a clunky workaround. I just enter a new contact on my iPhone. When you do that, custom label is available. It would take forever to do all my synced contacts like that, but it works. A lot of my synced contacts are messy anyway - "?" replaces an apostrophe, other random characters etc. I would love a way to be able to do all of them at once.

I have the same issue and have been doing some comparisons to identify when the issue exists. 1st, both of my iphones (one a provided work phone 4s and a personal 5) are running ios 7.0.3. My personal iPhone phone 5 syncs with my Mac and icloud and has all of the possible labels including custom labels. My work phone 4s has a mixture of my work contacts which come from Outlook and exchange and my personal contacts for my Mac contacts app..

I have found that where the labeling originates impacts what I see on my work (exchange synced) phone. My contact info, as an example came from my Mac and I have 4 phone numbers Mobile, mobile, home, company. The first mobile is my work mobile number and when I look at the label options it only shows the limited list w/o custom labels, likewise for the company number. However, when I look at the label for my home and personal numbers, both of which came from my Mac, I see the extended labeling option including custom labels.

Since I have synced my contact information to both icloud and exchange I have all of my various labels no matter if I change my groups selections or not for contacts that origniated on my Mac.

Bottom line, it appears that if you want a more robust list of possible labels you need to originate your contacts on a Mac or other computer that does not have exchange or Outlook limitations and then sync them to your iPhone.

+1

I faced the same issue on iphone4s 6.1.3. Work phone sync to iCloud and Exchange.

In Settings -> Mail, Contacts, Calendars, my default account for "Contacts" is Exchange.

Could not add custom labels to new/existing contacts.

I had to do this:-

- Tap on Groups (Top left)

- Tap on "All Exchange" (this disable viewing all Exchange contacts)

- Tap on "Done"

- You can add or edit iCloud contacts and "Add Custom Label" would appear...

When you are finished and want to see the Exchange contacts

- Tap on Groups (Top left)

- Tap on "All Exchange" (this enable viewing all Exchange contacts)

- Tap on "Done"

Note: Even if "All Exchange" is enabled, you can still access/add "Custom Labels" for contacts stored in iCloud. The only issue would be creating new Contacts which for my phone, goes by default to Exchange.

It may be that Exchange Contacts do not allow Custom Labels... preventing Additing/Editing...

Thanks for that! Same issue on 3gs 6.1.3

I'm not sure when, why, how my default contacts setting was set to 'exchange', but it was, and caused same issue, it turns out, for 17 of my contacts, which were evidently entered after the default was erroneously set to exchange.

Just an extra tidbit for others fwimbw:

Doing the Groups exercise Teddy mentions above worked the same for me.

Also, went into the Settings -> Mail, Contacts, Calendars, and changed my default account for "Contacts" from "exchange" to "icloud" which solves the problem entirely for me going forward - ie. any contacts I add from now on automatically have the custom fields available.

That might be an obvious step from Teddy's post, but in case someone missed it, there it is.

I just met with the same problem, trying to add or delete custom labels in my two iOS7 iPads.

It does work in my iOS6 iPhone but not in the Pad.

What can I do to customize contact labels also in the iPads?

Karlotto

To add a custom label just touch the title field to the left of the phone number and a drop down menu appears. Touch ADD CUSTOM LABEL optio. Then type in what you want your label to be and then press RETURN on the keypad. Your label will change to what you have just typed in. I am not on iCoud and I have only had my iPad Mini a few weeks and it works. HOPE THIS HELPS EVERYONE WITH THIS PROBLEM.

II've just discovered that if I select GROUPS (top left), disable my Hotmail account, I can then see the option of 'add custom label'. Some contacts might disappear, especially the one you want to change the label on, but just create a new contact, change the label, add some info, save, go back to GROUPS and reinstate Hotmail I can then re-edit the new contact and add the details I want.

I am having the same problem: I absolutely cannot Edit my Contacts labels to make a custom label. iCloud cleverly managed to drop two of my Contacts (one of them my son!), and my son's old Contacts entry had a label for "iPhone." It flat out doesn't exist any longer. Why?

All,

If you work on the Apple Contacts App (on a Mac OSX) you certainly have the possibility for Custom Labels.

Now I am working with Outlook AND Apple Contacts and sync with both.

If you define a Custom Label in Apple Contacts App. and sync to your iPhone in a separate group the Custom Label will show up in your iPhone Contacts display.

Hope this helps