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Advanced Search Function

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Find files fast with Canto’s advanced search capabilities. Your search results can be filtered by keywords, authors, dates, file sizes, file types, and much more.

 

You may also want to read:

Canto's basic search

How to apply filters


How to use the Advanced Search function

Canto’s advanced search options give you the ability to make specifications to your searches.

  1. Move the mouse pointer over the search/filter icon in the search field.

    The extended search menu is displayed.

  2. If you select Exact Match you will only receive results that have exactly the term you searched for (i.e. in the same order) in the metadata.
    Note: You need to wrap your search term in an asterisk "*".
    For example, when searching for *World Health Organization* using exact match, only assets appear in the results which include those three terms in the same order (including upper and lower case).
  3. Specify whether you want to search globally - i.e. in your entire library - or only within the currently displayed results, e.g. within an album.
    You can use the Within Results feature to narrow down your previous search term(s) - i.e. your first search is "tree" and you want to narrow it down to only PDF files, go ahead and hover over the filter symbol, select Within Results and type in ".pdf".
  4. Multiple search terms can be combined in different ways. Separate search terms with space ( ), comma (,) or semicolon (;).
    • Select AND to find files whose metadata contains all terms from the search field.
      Entering "apple, orange" finds all files that have the strings apple and orange in their metadata.
      You can exclude terms from the search with a preceding minus sign.
      Entering "apple, -orange" finds all files that have apple but not orange in the metadata.
    • Choose OR to find files whose metadata contains at least one of the terms in the search box.
      You can use OR to search for multiple search terms at once. Typing, for example, "101, 102, 125, 375" will find all files that contain either one of these terms or a combination of several.
    • Use the wildcard search (*) if you do not know the exact search term.  The input of "*hans" and "hans*" finds all files, in whose metadata the character string "hans" occurs at any place, e.g. Hanswurst, Buchanstalt, Chanson, Schmalhans, ...  The terms can be combined with AND as well as with OR.
  5. If necessary, specify under - Only within fields - in which metadata fields you want to search (default: all metadata fields are searched).

 

Special symbols

Special symbols such as "&", "_", "-" in keywords will cause the keywords to split. If you search for "Mac & Cheese", your search will be for the term "Mac" and for the term "Cheese".
In order to find results that include special symbols you would have to use Exact Match function.

 

Please avoid naming files with these symbols ("*", "?", "&", "-") alone. For example, if you named a file "&.jpg" it will not show up in your search.


If you are using direct URLs or any integration based on the asset's Content ID, you can find assets in the library based on a Content ID search parameter. 

To find an asset based on the Content ID, simply use the following format #id:{content id} in the search bar.

You can find an asset's Content ID on its information page.
See Direct URLs to download & embed to learn how to enable Direct URLs for your information page.

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