WebHelp:Search/5.0

Wiki Home > MediaMonkey 5 Help > Navigating the Library > Search

---

Introduction

MediaMonkey offers several different methods to search for media files within the MediaMonkey Library. You can use the Search Bar for a quick search, Contextual Search to search within the displayed media files in the Filelisting or Advanced Search to use complex Criteria to fine tune the search results.

Search Bar

The Search Bar allows you to search the the displayed File List, or the Entire Library. Use the Search icon in the toolbar to open the Search box. You can change the scope of Search using the <down> arrow next to the search button. For most searches, just enter your search criteria in the Search Bar and MediaMonkey will search most commonly used text fields for the relevant tracks.

To configure which fields are searched, and set default search parameters go to Tools > Options > Search from the Main Menu:

MediaMonkey Options Search

• Search current view controls how the Contextual Search searches within the Filelisting.
• Search whole words only will limit search matches to whole words. This means that Madon won't find Madonna.
• Search mode set to Ignore diacritics / Match beginning of words will find "Weird Al" Yankovic when searching Weird Al Yankovic whereas Respect diacritics / Match within words won't. Search mode set to Ignore diacritics / Match beginning of words will not find Queen when searching ueen whereas Respect diacritics / Match within words will. Respect diacritics / Match within words will result in a slower search.
• Search the following fields via the Search bar allows you to select which fields should be included in the search when using the Search Bar. The more fields you enable the slower the search.

Search Logical Operators

The logical operators described below can fine-tune your results:

Search Term	Search Results
A	Tracks with A* or á* . e.g. Search for 'be' will return tracks by 'The Beatles' and 'Bébé'
+A	Tracks with A* only . e.g. Search for 'be' will return tracks by 'The Beatles' but not 'Bébé'
"A"	Tracks with A only. This is useful when you want an exact match.
A B A AND B	Tracks with A AND B. For example to find tracks containing both U2 and Pop, type: U2 Pop .
A OR B A ; B	Tracks with either A or B. For example to find tracks where genre is children or kids, type: children OR kids .
A NOT B A -B	Tracks with A and not B.
A OR B C OR D -E	Tracks with (A OR B) AND (C OR D) NOT E . i.e. OR has precedence over AND and NOT.
<Field>:	Limits the search to a particular field.  Valid fields include: 'Actor', 'Actors', 'Artist', 'Album', 'AlbumArtist', 'Album Artist', 'Composer', 'Conductor', 'Comment', 'Copyright', 'custom1', 'custom2', 'custom3', 'custom4', 'custom5', 'Director', 'Encoder', 'Genre', 'Grouping', 'Lyricist', 'Lyrics', 'OriginalArtist', 'Original Artist', 'OriginalTitle', 'Original Title', 'OriginalLyricist', 'Original Lyricist', 'Path', 'Producer', 'Publisher', 'Series', 'Screenwriter', 'Title', 'Mood', 'Tempo', 'Occasion', 'Quality', 'InvolvedPeople', 'Involved People', 'Year', 'Origdate', 'Original Date', 'Rating', 'Bpm', 'Disc#', 'Disc number', 'Track', 'Track#', 'Length', 'Bitrate', 'Frequency', 'Played', 'Played #', 'Lastplayed', 'Last Played', 'Channels', 'Leveling'.
Artist:A	Tracks with Artist = A . Other supported fields are: Artist, Album, Album Artist / AlbumArtist, Title, Genre, Path, Composer, Disc#, Lyricist, Conductor, Grouping, Lyrics, Comment, custom 1 / custom1, custom 2 / custom2, custom 3 / custom3, custom 4 / custom4, custom 5 / custom5, Original Artist / OriginalArtist, Original Title / OriginalTitle, Original Lyricist / OriginalLyricist, Publisher, Encoder, Copyright, Mood, Tempo, Occasion, Quality, Involved People / InvolvedPeople
Year:X..Y	Tracks with year ranging X to Y . Other supported fields are: Year, Original Date / origdate, Rating, bpm, Disc, Track, Length, Bitrate, Frequency, Played# / played, Last Played / lastplayed, Channels, Leveling
Rating: X..	Tracks with rating of X stars or greater.
', ':', '.', '_', '(', ')', '[', ']', '&', '@', '#', ' ', '*', '!', '-', ';'	Searches for special characters: returns Tracks with the special character. Search for special characters embedded in a string e.g. 'Help!' : Ignores the special character, and returns all Tracks containing 'Help'. Search for "Help!" : Finds an exact match (doesn't ignore the special character). Searches for drive letters (e.g. C: or C:/) are treated exceptionally--the ':' is not ignored.

Advanced Search

Advanced search allows you to search the entire library by any set of criteria. To do this:

1. Click the Search icon, then the down arrow next to search and select Advanced Search.
2. Click the '+' icon, and select the Criteria you would like to search for. You can add multiple Criteria to refine the search results. Keep in mind that:
   • For any individual Criteria, if you select multiple values (e.g. Tempo is Fast, Very Fast), the search will find any file where Tempo is Fast or Very Fast.
   • If you select multiple Criteria (e.g. one criteria is Artist=Police and another Genre=Rock), then the criteria can be additive or not, depending on whether you choose 'All' or 'Any' criteria to be matched.

If you wish to save the search results, use the Advanced Search 3-dot (⋮) menu icon to Save as AutoPlaylist.

Note: For date-based searches such as tracks between 1978 and today, you can use the value of 'Present'. e.g. search for tracks between '1978' and 'Present'.

Contextual Search

When viewing files in the Filelisting you can type to start a contextual search shown right of the breadcrumbs navigation under the Main Menu. Alternatively you can set the Search to Search current view to open the Contextual Search. The Contextual search will search within the current displayed list of Media Files in the Filelisting. The Contextual Search has two modes, accessible from the menu using the down arrow icon next to the Contextual Search box:

• Filters matches which will show only media files matching the Contextual Search value
• Scrolls to match which will select the media file that matches the Contextual Search value. Use the Up/Down arrow icons in the Contextual Search to highlight the previous/next match. Scrolls to match will only match on values in the primary sort column.

Find More from Same

In cases where you are browsing a particular File and want to quickly see related Files, such as those by the same Artist, in the same Genre, Album, Year, or Folder, you can quickly find the related Files using Find More from Same. Right click on the File and use Find More from Same from the Context Menu. This will navigate you to the matching node in the Media Tree.

If you want MediaMonkey to open the corresponding node in the Media Tree you'll need to enable Show all subnodes and Focus tree nodes when browsing using the ⋮ symbol in the Media Tree.

Find More from Same also allows you to open the selected file location in File Explorer when using Find More from Same > Folder (Explorer). With Find More from Same > Folder (All) MediaMonkey will open the file's location in the Folders node in the Media Tree, whereas Find More from Same > Folder (Library) will open the location in the Collections & gt; Location sub-node in the Media Tree.

Related

• Adding Existing Media Files to the Library
• Using AutoPlaylists

English

Additional Help: Knowledge Base | Forum | MediaMonkey Support | MediaMonkey for Android Help | MediaMonkey 5 Help | MediaMonkey 4 Help