Controlling which files to index by creating filters

How index filtering works

By default, Index Manager will try to include all files in a document folder that is attached to an index. However, you can use a file name or search filter to control precisely which files are included or excluded from the index.

There are two types of filtering available: 

• File name filters are used to include or exclude certain files based on their filename and/or extension
• Search filters are used to process metadata while the index is being built. While search filters are more powerful in letting you fine-tune precisely the content you want to include in an index, an index with a search filter also takes slightly longer to build because of the extra search processing.

Note: After creating filters, you need to restart the Index Manager service and rebuild any existing indexes to incorporate the changes.

Defining a file filter

You can choose to either include or exclude files based on the specified criteria, but you cannot make a combination query of include and exclude conditions.

Select Include matching files or Exclude matching files.

Use the drop-down lists to choose the criteria and the Criteria field to fill in the parts of the file name the filter has to match.

File filter tip: When creating a file filter to exclude certain folders from indexing, use the Full path contains option and enter the individual folder names that should be excluded. A second option is to add a tilde to the name of folders that should be ignored. For more information, see How to prevent crawling of specific folders.

Defining a search filter

A search filter can replace an auto search archive in FotoStation or FotoWeb. Search filtering is more effective than an auto search when the number of files in the index is large (10.000 – 20.000 files or more) since it implies that the client will not perform a search every time it accesses the archive. However, when specifying a search filter, the index will take longer to build since Index Manager has to extract metadata and match it with the specified criteria for every single file in the archive during index buildup.

To set your search criteria, start by selecting a metadata field in the dropdown list. Then choose whether the field Contains, Does not contain, Is empty , or Is not empty and specify an additional string if applicable. You can add additional search criteria by selecting Add new filter.