Question

Advanced Search to Retrieve Documents without a Specific Metadata Field

Search and Retrieval

Updated March 14, 2017

asked on January 9, 2014 • Show version history

Hello,

Is there any provision to search for documents that do not have a specific field as part of its metadata?

note: similar to searching documents with no template

note: ***not the same*** as for searching documents whose field 'x' has no value...

Thanks in advance...

Louis-Simon

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Answer

APPROVED ANSWER

replied on January 9, 2014 • Show version history

Let's say you had a field called "Important Field".

To find all documents and folders that have that field, you would use this advanced search syntax:

{LF:Name="*", Type="DBF"} & {[]:[Important Field]=""}

To find all documents that do NOT have that field, you would use this advanced search syntax:

{LF:Name="*", Type="DBF"} - {[]:[Important Field]=""}

If you just need to search Documents and not Folders, replaced DBF with DB.

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replied on January 9, 2014

Hello Gareth,

Its works well with ... - {[]:[Important Field]<>""} indeed.

Thank's a lot !

Lou

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replied on January 9, 2014

{LF:Name="*", Type="DBF"} - {[]:[Important Field]=""} or {LF:Name="*", Type="DBF"} - {[]:[Important Field]<>""} is not going to give you great performance in a large repository since you're basically saying "get everything in the repository and then pull out the entries where the field is/is not blank".

Are you trying to add this field to all entries in the repository? Or are you trying to find the entries where the field is assigned as part of the template but left blank?

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replied on March 14, 2017

Hey Miruna,

I am trying to do something similar to this. I am trying to periodically search the File Room for any folder that does not have a field assigned to it (if it is assigned it should also be populated). From that search I will then work to assign and populate the field.

This is currently what I am using and the performance is not ideal.

{LF:LOOKIN="path", SUBFOLDERS=0} & {LF:Name="*", Type="F"} - {[]:[important field]<>""}

Any suggestions?

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replied on January 22, 2015

This is exactly what I need to do. Find documents that do not have a field assigned and then eventually assign the Field.

But I get the following error:

Access denied [9013]

Here is my Search Query code:

{LF:Name="*", Type="DB"} - {[]:[My Important Field]=""} & {LF:LOOKIN="My Path\Dev\"}

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replied on January 23, 2015 • Show version history

I would try running the LOOKIN and the field criteria separately before you combine them to troubleshoot for typos.

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Advanced Search to Retrieve Documents without a Specific Metadata Field

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