I have a label that touches several files in two different changesets. I want to use that label for a merge. The VS IDE gives me an error message "No items match $<path> in the label myLabel@$/<path>".

So then I figured this could only be handled with the command line merge. I tried this:

tf merge /recursive /version:LmyLabel /preview /noprompt $<frompath> $<topath>

And it gives me essentially the same error.

If I ask TFS about the label "myLabel," it gives me a nice description of the files that are in it. Then I decided to try the command line merge using a changeset spec that is synonimous with that label (e.g. C305~C306). This worked.

So is the final conclusion that TFS can't merge a label?

The $<frompath> was the immediate parent directory that contains all files with this label. As such, nothing was implicitly omitted. And the changeset-based merge, using the exact same "from" and "to" path, worked fine - getting every single file that the label had referenced (since that label consisted of precisely the two changesets I chose in the version spec).

In short, merging labels evidently isn't operative.