Finding Photos

Open the gallery you want to search

You search photos one project or one order at a time, on that record's Photos tab. There is no account-wide photo search, so open the project or the order first, then the tab.

The box at the top of the gallery reads Search by file name or note..., and it looks at more than its label suggests:

• The photo's file name.
• The note added when the photo was uploaded, and the note recorded on a field photo when it was taken.
• Every tag name on the photo.
• Where the photo came from — though not by the name printed on the card. See Narrow by where a photo came from.
• The photo's caption, on accounts with Photo search captions switched on. See AI Photo Captions.

Capital letters make no difference, and the gallery re-runs the search a moment after you stop typing.

Type whole words, not partial ones

Search matches whole words. Typing conc finds nothing on a photo described as concrete — you have to type the whole word.

Punctuation is not searchable, and it splits a name into separate words. A file called slab-pour-01.jpg is found by slab, by pour, by 01, by slab pour, or by the whole file name.

Type more than one word and every word has to match the same photo. Two consequences catch people out:

• or is an operator. concrete or steel finds photos matching either word.
• and is not. concrete and steel also looks for the literal word "and", which almost always means no results.

Quotation marks and minus signs do nothing — there is no phrase search and no way to exclude a word. Pasting in a sentence almost always comes back empty, because every word in it has to match the same photo. Paste in more than 200 characters and the search is refused before it runs.

Narrow by where a photo came from

The badges on a photo card name where it came from — Project upload, Workpack, Field response, and so on. Typing one of those names into the search box is not how to filter by it.

Use the Source filter instead. It is the drop-down under the search box: open it, tick one or more sources, and the gallery narrows to photos from those sources. It works for every source name, including the three above.

Every other source name does turn up matches when typed, but each one also matches any photo whose file name, note or tag happens to contain the same word. Source is the only reliable route.

Combine filters without emptying the gallery

The search box and the filters beneath it all narrow the same gallery, and a photo has to satisfy every one of them. A filter left on from earlier is the usual reason a search "stops working".

They do not all combine the same way:

• Tags is all of. Pick two tags and you get only the photos carrying both.
• Source is any of. Pick two sources and you get photos from either.
• From and To bracket the date range.
• Order is any of, and narrows a project's gallery to particular orders. An order's own gallery has no Order filter, because everything in it already belongs to that order.

Reset filters clears the lot — the search box included, which its name does not suggest.

If you arrived from Linked results by clicking View photos, a banner above the gallery reads Showing photos from followed by the record's name. That banner is a filter too, and everything you search afterwards stays inside it. Click Show all photos to drop it.

When your search finds nothing

An empty result reads No photos available — the same words a project with no photos at all shows. Nothing on screen says the search is what emptied the gallery, so a mistyped search looks exactly like missing photos.

A search of more than 200 characters is refused before it runs, and the gallery is replaced by Failed to load images. That is not an empty result, and Try Again re-sends the same text — shorten what you typed and search again.

Work back out in this order:

1. Read the empty message. No photos from followed by a record's name means the Showing photos from banner is still on, and that is what emptied the gallery — click Show all photos.
2. Clear the search box. If photos come back, the text was the problem — retype it one word at a time to find the word that matched nothing.
3. Click Reset filters. That drops Source, Tags, Order, From, To, the search text and the record banner together.

If the gallery is still empty after all three, the project or order genuinely has no photos yet.

Put the newest photos first

A single button sits beside the search box, showing Newest or Oldest. It names the order you are in now; click it to switch. A gallery you have just opened starts on Newest.

Results are always in date order, never by how closely they match. A photo whose note or caption is a perfect match still sits wherever its date puts it, which can be hundreds of photos down.

Load the rest of the matches

The gallery loads 50 photos at a time, and the count beside the Photos heading tells you how many are on screen — not how many matched.

Scroll to the bottom and the next 50 load on their own; Load more does the same on demand. Once Load more goes grey with nothing left to fetch, everything that matched is loaded and that count is the real total.

Load them all before you select anything. Select all loaded takes the photos in the gallery, not every match, so a search with 300 hits and one page on screen selects 50 of them.

Searches are not saved

Nothing about a search is in the address bar. Copy the page link and send it to a colleague and they land on the same gallery with no search, no filters and no sort — you cannot bookmark a search or share one.

The search box, the filters and the sort clear when you reload the page, and again when you move to another tab on the record and come back. The Showing photos from banner is the exception: it survives a tab switch, so a gallery that looks oddly short after you return is usually still narrowed to one record.

To keep a set of photos you have found, select them and package them up — see Exporting Evidence.

Search inside one workpack or Field response

The Linked results tab beside Photos lists the workpacks and Field responses attached to this project or order. It splits into Workpacks and Field responses, each with a Status filter and no search box — there is nothing to type into on that tab.

1. Open Linked results and find the workpack or Field response.
2. Click View photos. You land on Photos, narrowed to that record.
3. Search as usual. The narrowing stays on until you click Show all photos.

More on that tab in Linked Results.