Notes/docs/User Guide/User Guide/Advanced Usage/Attributes/Attribute Inheritance.md

Attribute Inheritance

Inheritance refers to the process of having a label or a relation shared across multiple notes, generally in parent-child relations (or anywhere if using templates).

Standard Inheritance

In Trilium, attributes can be automatically inherited by child notes if they have the isInheritable flag set to true. This means the attribute (a key-value pair) is applied to the note and all its descendants.

To make an attribute inheritable, simply use the visual editor for Labels or Relations. Alternatively, the attribute can be manually defined where #myLabel=value becomes #myLabel(inheritable)=value when inheritable.

As an example, the archived label can be set to be inheritable, allowing you to hide a whole subtree of notes from searches and other dialogs by applying this label at the top level.

Standard inheritance forces all the notes that are children (and sub-children) of a note to have that particular label or relation. If there is a need to have some notes not inherit one of the labels, then copying inheritance or template inheritance needs to be used instead.

Copying Inheritance

Copying inheritance differs from standard inheritance by using a child: prefix in the attribute name. This prefix causes new child notes to automatically receive specific attributes from the parent note. These attributes are independent of the parent and will persist even if the note is moved elsewhere.

If a parent note has the label #child:exampleAttribute, all newly created child notes (one level deep) will inherit the #exampleAttribute label. This can be useful for setting default properties for notes in a specific section.

Similarly, for relations use ~child:myRelation.

Due to the way it's designed, copying inheritance cannot be used to cascade infinitely within a hierarchy. For that use case, consider using either standard inheritance or templates.

Chained inheritance

It is possible to define labels across multiple levels of depth. For example, #child:child:child:foo applied to a root note would create:

• #child:child:foo on the first-level children.
• #child:foo on the second-level children.
• #foo on the third-level children.

Similarly, use ~child:child:child:foo if dealing with relations.

Do note that same as simple copying inheritance, the changes will not apply retroactively to existing notes in the hierarchy, it will only apply to the newly created notes.

Template Inheritance

Attributes can also be inherited from Templates. When a new note is created using a template, it inherits the attributes defined in that template. This is particularly useful for maintaining consistency across notes that follow a similar structure or function.