Searching for media files

In Elements Organizer, you can find photos and media files by: date, visual similarity, star rating, album, folder location, filename, media type, keyword tag, text, or other criteria. You can also sort files in any grouping in chronological, reverse-chronological, or album order.

Elements Organizer offers several ways to find media files. You can use any one, or a combination of the following mechanisms to find the media you're looking for.

Albums and Folders panel

Select an album or folder to view media files in it. You can hide or show the panel using the Show/Hide Panel button, located in the control bar at the bottom of the application window.

Find menu

Use the commands in this menu to find media files by date, caption or note, filename, history, version, media type, metadata, or visual similarity. Commands are also available for starting advanced search, finding photos and media files that have unknown dates and times, no keyword tags, or are not in any album. For more information, see Using the Find menu.

Timeline

Click a month or set a range to find photos and media files chronologically by date, import batch (available in Sort By bar), or folder location (managed view and tree view). Choose View > Timeline (Command + L) to display the timeline. For more information, see Finding media files using timeline.

Star rating filter

View only those media files with a star rating greater than, equal to, or less than the number of stars you specify. For more information, see Find items with star ratings attached.

Keywords tag panel

Select a keyword tag to see media files with that tag. For more information, see Finding media files by keyword tags.

Find bar

Drag a photo keyword tag, project, or album onto the find bar to refine a search. The find bar does not display by default, but is shown after you run a search.

Find media files using Enhanced Search

The Enhanced Search feature, introduced in Elements Organizer 15, provides you a quick and powerful way to search your media files. For example, you can search for all files that include one or more of your family members created on the occasion of birthdays within the last two years. For more information, see Using Enhanced Search.

The Enhanced Serach feature is available in Elements Organizer 15 and later.

Locate files on disc

If you're uploading the file to a server or embedding it into the layout of a document, you'll need the actual file. To locate the actual file of photos or media, do the following:

1. Select a photo or media clip whose file you want to find.
2. Press Option + Enter to open the Information panel.
3. In the General section, the actual location on disk is displayed. Click Location to open the containing folder in Finder.