Search for Files and Folders in the WebUI

Egnyte’s search tool allows users to quickly search for vast quantities of files and folders. When searching for content, there are a few things you should keep in mind to ensure you get the most out of your searches. 

Default Search

Quick Search Filters

Advanced Search Options

Metadata Search

Image Similarity Search

Geolocation Search

Saved Search

Search Details

Default Search

Entering a term, like “image,” will return results that contain that term, like “stock images” or “file-selected-expanded-image.”

Quick Search Filters

Search Current Folder or Entire Account

The user can search only the items contained in their current folder, or can search their entire account. By default, only the items contained in the current folder are searched. User can search the entire account by changing the location setting to All Folders.

Search for Items Containing Any or All Words

Users can search for items that contain any of the search words entered, or search for items that include all of the search words entered. By default, the search will return results that contain any of the words entered. Users can restrict the results to items that contain all of the search words by choosing ‘All search words’ in the dropdown menu.

Search Through Folders or Files

Egnyte account might contain tens of thousands of folders and files; finding a single one of those could be tough. Egnyte has a folder or file search option for this use case. Select Folders, and it will return folders that match the search criteria; select Files and only files matching the search will appear.

Filter Search Results by Modified Time

Users can narrow down search results so that they include only files modified within a certain time period. Modified Time filter can be used in such scenarios. Users can choose only to see files modified within the last 24 hours, week, month, 3 months, 6 months, the last year or define a specific time period.

Save User Defaults for Quick Filters

In order to use specific quick filter settings for most of the searches, the user can save the filter set as their own default settings. Click on Save Search to save the filter set.

The user can provide a name to save the search and it will then automatically populate every time a new search is started.

Advanced Search Options

Filter Search Results by File Type

The user can limit the search results to only show certain types of file formats. For instance, if the user is looking for an image file, they can select Image from the list so all other file types will be excluded from the  results.

Filter Search Results by Uploaded Time

If the user knows the file they are looking for was uploaded within a specific time frame, they can use the Uploaded Time filter to narrow the results. They can choose only to find files uploaded within the last 24 hours, week, month, 3 months, 6 months, the last year, or within a specific time period.

Filter Results by Who Last Updated the Content

If the user knows the file they are looking for was uploaded within a specific time frame, they can use the Uploaded Time filter to narrow the results. They can choose only to find files uploaded within the last 24 hours, week, month, 3 months, 6 months, the last year, or within a specific time period.

Wildcard Search

Users can insert an asterisk to act as a wildcard in their search; this will pick up any extra letters or suffixes that might be attached to the search term. For instance, a user is looking for any files and folders that contain the word “image” in the name. Searching for “image” alone would miss results like “images” or “image-new,” but adding an asterisk ensures those results are fetched.

Search for at Least One Term ("OR")

Entering multiple terms will return folders and files that pertain to any of those search terms. For example, a search for “image capture” would return any items where either “image” or “capture” is relevant. In this case, the “Capture” file name pertains to the term “capture,” but has nothing to do with the search term “image.” Spaces between search terms are interpreted as "OR."

Search for All Terms ("AND")

The user can narrow the search by inserting the word "AND" in all capital letters between each term. This will limit results to files that contain both terms. Searching “image and capture” yields only results where both terms are relevant.

Search for a Specific Phrase

If the user is looking for a specific phrase, they can also search using quotation marks. This will only yield files that contain that exact phrase. In the example below, searching “knowledge base” will only return items that match that string.

Boolean Search

Certain Boolean operations (AND, OR, NOT) are supported in Egnyte search. Egnyte supports grouping to allow adjusting how multiple Boolean operators work together using parentheses to group words.

• For instance, the filename is “marketing plan 22072024 powershot a 123”, then a valid search criteria to fetch the file will be “marketing plan” AND “powershot a”.
• Similarly, if the filename is “marketing plan 22072024 powerShot a 123”, then a valid search criteria to fetch the file will be “marketing plan” AND “power shot a”.

Metadata Search

If the user has Metadata set up in Egnyte's Web UI or with API, they can add metadata search criteria to their search options by selecting the three dots next to the search bar, and clicking metadata search criteria.

From here, the user can select to search for any metadata section and property they have added to a file or folder. Click Search to add that to the existing search filters.

Egnyte’s file search engine will also consider a folder or file’s metadata (i.e., the folder where it lives, notes added to the file, etc.) when determining how relevant a result is. Although, a file’s name is weighted more heavily than metadata. Learn about using Egnyte's Metadata API on the domain.

Image Similarity Search

Image Similarity Search can locate images that are visually similar. This feature provides an efficient way to find related images based on the image being viewed in a folder list or search result.

Users can search for similar images by:

• Clicking the More like this row action, which is shown below.
  -OR-
• Selecting More like this within the context menu via normal selecting or right-clicking the image file.
  

The system will then use the selected image as a reference to find and display other images in the folder structure that share visual similarities.

Geolocation Search

This feature is accessible to users with an active AEC package. It enables users to locate images taken in specific places. By harnessing the EXIF data within image files, this feature accurately identifies the geolocation of photos, providing the user with the ability to conveniently search and organize their image collection.

How to Leverage Geolocation Search

1. Select the Geolocation Search tile from the Advanced search menu.
   
2. In the pop-up window, the system defaults to the current location.
   • If the location is incorrect, make sure the location has been granted for the given device. Check the browser's site settings and ensure location access is allowed the your Egnyte domain.
     
3. Alternatively, manually enter the desired address or geo-coordinates.
   
4. Adjust the radius slider to fine-tune the search area according to the preference.
   
5. Click Apply to locate all images taken within the specified vicinity.
   

Saved Search

The user can save the queries that they run often (such as finding all spreadsheets with the word ‘expense’ in the title that have been uploaded within the last week). When a search query is saved, all search keywords as well as all associated search filters are saved.

In order to save a query, first execute the search, and then click ‘Save Search’ on the Search results screen.

Users would be prompted to provide a name for the saved query.

To execute a previously-saved search, click on the saved searches dropdown and select the query to execute.

Search Details

Search Trash

Egnyte's search results do not include files in the trash. To learn more about searching in the Trash, refer to this article.

Search Weights

Filenames have a higher weight in scoring results. The number of matches within a file also plays a role in ranking the search results. In addition to that, files modified relatively recently will have a higher weight.

Tokenized Search of File and Folder Names

When searching for a file or folder name, Egnyte tokenizes the search into groups of 3 letters called trigrams. For example, searching for "brexit" would create four tokens ("bre," "rex," "exi," and "xit") and any file/folder name which matches at least 50% of search tokens would be considered a match. A folder named "Existing Breaks" would be displayed in the search results since it matches two out of the four tokens ("bre" and "exi") but a folder named "Breaks" would not be displayed since it only matches one token ("bre").

Searching Document Content

Text from the following file types are searchable: doc, docx, docm, xls, xlsx, xlsm, ppt, pptx, pptm, pdf, htm, html, txt, rtf, xml, pages, numbers, key, msg, zip, tar, tgz, odp, ods, odt, tsv, xhtml, csv, dot, wbk, dotm, docb, xlt, xlm, xlsm, xltx, xltm, xlsb, xla, xlam, xll, xlw, ppt, pot, pps, potx, potm, ppam, ppsx, ppsm, sldx, sldm, ps, epub, mbox.