Finder Tags Disappear after Saving.

There is likely nothing to be done until Apple releases 10.13.1, and/or Microsoft releases the next version of Office 2016 for Mac after 15.39. Then I would retest if the problem is cleared up.

You may review the respective Word, Excel, etc application preferences to see if there are any settings that may have an impact on document tag retention.

Another more remote possibility is rebooting into Safe Boot mode, and testing if the tag information is lost after document save in that mode. Reboot normally.

If tags are retained in Safe Boot mode, and not after retesting again in normal boot mode, then it may be a Office 2016 for Mac application .plist causing the problem.

I do not have Office 2016 for Mac installed here, so cannot perform additional testing.

It sounds as though Excel is not preserving the document's Finder attributes when saving the document, or you are saving to an exFAT formatted drive, or a non-Apple Cloud service, where there is no support for Finder attributes. If you are using Excel 2008/2011, neither of these have been tested by Microsoft with High Sierra. Excel 2016 for Mac should save and preserve the document's tag attribute.

Documents saved to iCloud will retain their tag information, unless the saving application is not preserving the document's Finder tag attribute. Office 2016 for Mac v15.35, or later, is the only Mac office package that Microsoft recommends for High Sierra, and if you are using anything older, you are playing roulette with your documents.

Unfortunately, it happens with Office 2016 as well. I've tried everything; I deleted MS Office, re-installed it, same thing. I tried some terminal commands the senior engineer at work suggested (he thought there's a corrupt _DS_Store, or something like that); nada. In my case, it doesn't happen with any other file, only MS Office files. And the file itself (the contents I mean) isn't being affected. It's only the finder attributes (tags). It is very, very annoying...

At my work, we use the following process: the supervisor (from his end) assigns files to our team by using custom tags with our names. When I navigate to Finder and click on the tag with my name, I see the files assigned to me. When I open the file (which I repeat, has my name tag on it) the tag stays there. The moment I save/modify the file somehow it loses its tag(s).

This is something that is happening only with MS Office 2016 files. Any other file (including Pages, Numbers, etc.) is behaving properly. It started happening since I upgraded to High Sierra (I performed a clean install).

P.S. I forgot to add that the files I'm talking about are on Dropbox (shared for company purposes) but this behaviour happens in files that are stored locally too.

Another regretful upgrade. Thinks worked fine before High Sierra. Office 2011 here. Really shouldn't have to upgrade because Apple cannot making something simple as tagging work. I use so many tags now they are all lost if i open and save a file. Thanks Apple.

I found the problem and fixed it!

The issue for me was that I was using an older version of Office (2011)

The new version of the IOS does not work with Office 2011. I upgraded

to office 2016 on my desktop and laptop and this fixed the issue.

Bad news - Its going to cost $$$ to fix the issue.

Good news - Once I upgraded to Office 2016 I stopped getting ****** off!

There is nothing worse than not being able to find your important files if you

are a business user.

Good luck everyone!

You are using Office for Mac 2011. Microsoft chose not to test this product against macOS High Sierra, cautions against its use with High Sierra for that reason, and no longer supports the product. Apparently Office 2016 for Mac v15.40 solves the lost tag issues on High Sierra. None of this is Apple's responsibility or fault.

Same exact problem here. The files aren't affected, but the moment I save a document, the file loses its tag. If anyone knows how to solve this, it would be greatly appreciated.

I have this problem too.

I use lots of tags for every project, it's a very annoying problem to search all over my folders now.
I hope it gets fixed with the next update 🙂

In my case, it happens with all kinds of files (Word, Excel and pdf) and all saved to iCloud 😉

Thank you for your input, I do have Microsoft Office 15.39 (171010)

How are the Finder tags initially set? At any time, is the file saved to One Drive, Google Drive, or Dropbox locally?

What do you mean?