Searching Foto

All files in our system have descriptive text that will help you find them and identify them. You just need to know how to find what you are looking for. This guide gives you a quick introduction on how to search, and presents some good tips when you can't find what you are searching for.

Quick Search

The Quick Search on the homepage is a simple search. Type the words that represent the subject you are looking for in the "search" box and press the Search button. This will return a list of thumbnails associated with what you searched for.

The Quick Search is also available from the top of the page that displays the thumbnails but with more options available.
Select Search in Results to refine your current search.
The All Fields box allows you to select the exact field to search for a more specific result, or simply choose all fields.
Click the New Search button to do a fresh search, not incorporating any previous results.

If you carry out a serach from within a collection, then only images in that collection matching your search criteria will be displayed.

Advanced Search

Select Advanced Search from the Menu across the top of the page. This is an expanded version of the Quick Search. You can limit your search by Date, Size and Dimension of a file.

Wildcard characters

When you search, you can use the operator * and ? to search for partial words. The question mark (?) can be replaced by any character. The star (*) can be replaced with any or no characters.
'c?r' matches car
'f*' matches food, fast, furious, etc.
'*plane' matches plane, airplane, etc.

Boolean operators

You can also use the boolean operators 'and', 'or' and 'not'.
'john and mariah' matches all files with the words 'john' and 'mariah'
'not robert' matches all files that do not contain the word 'robert'
'john or robert or mariah' matches all files that have one or more of the words 'john', 'robert' and 'mariah'
'john or (robert and mariah)' matches files with the word 'john' or the words 'robert' and 'mariah'

You can also combine the boolean operators with the wildcard characters.

'jo* or (rob* and maria?)'
'john and robert or maria?'
'f* and p* and m*'

Finding misspelled words

FotoWeb supports a special kind of search called 'fuzzy' search. This allows you to find a word even if you misspell it when you search or if it has been misspelled when the file was described. You can turn on the fuzzy-search in the Advanced Search or you can use the fuzziness operator directly when you type a search. Use to percentage signs (%%) immediately after each other near the part of the word you suspect is misspelled.

'eli%%sabeth' matches 'elisabeth' and 'elizabeth'
'maria%%h' matches 'maria' and 'mariah'

Searching Using Keywords

You can click on the Keyword link in the menu bar at the top of the page and it will display as a pop up window. Type in a letter or two of the word you are looking for and press Search. This is particularly useful when you are unscertain about a spelling. Then click on the keyword and your search will start. Alternatively you can select a keyword from the list that appears underneath.