Search and filter data and tags

Quickly find notes, tags, insights, and highlights across projects in your workspace with our full-text search. Intuitive filter and sort controls make it easy to create complex queries, including queries with And and Or logic gates.

Start a new search

Click Search in the top left of the screen. By default, search shows results from all projects in your workspace. If you click Search while you’re in a project, results will be filtered by that project. Open the project select menu to change this.

Type some text into the text input and hit Enter.

Change the type of results

Click the tabs underneath the search input to switch the type of results you see. You can choose between All, Projects, Tags, Tags, Highlights, or Insights.

Filter your results

Click Filter to filter your results. You can add multiple filter rules using And and Or logic gates to join rules together.

Filter field reference

Dovetail’s search supports filtering results by the following fields. Please note that not every field listed below will be available when looking at different types in search – for example you won’t be able to filter by ‘published’ when looking at notes only.

• Title (text) – The plain title of the project, note, tag, or insight.

• Content (text) – The content of the readme, note, tag, insight, or highlight.

• Note (multi select) – A specific note.

• Tag (multi select) – A specific tag.

• Project (multi select) – A specific project.

• Highlight count (number) – The number of highlights on a tag.

• Project category (multi select) – A specific project category.

• Note board (multi select) – A specific note board.

• Note group (multi select) – A specific note group.

• Tag board (multi select) – A specific tag board.

• Tag group (multi select) – A specific tag group.

• Starred (boolean) – Whether a highlight is starred.

• Published (boolean) – Whether an insight is published.

• Created (date) – When the object was created.

• Updated (date) – When the object was last updated.

• Custom – Custom note and insight fields (seeAdd structured data with fields).

Search for multiple keywords

You can search for multiple keywords by filtering results based on Content.

To search for multiple keywords (for example “qualitative” and “research”), leave the search field blank and create a new filter. Then, add multiple filter rules on the Content field, with each keyword as a single filter rule.

Sort your results

Click Sort to sort your results. You can sort a field by Descending or Ascending and add multiple rules using And and Or logic gates to join rules together.

Sort field reference

Dovetail’s search supports sorting results by the following fields:

• Content (text) – The content of the readme, note, tag, insight, or highlight.

• Note (multi select) – A specific note.

• Starred (boolean) – Whether a highlight is starred.

• Created (date) – When the object was created.

• Updated (date) – When the object was last updated.

Save or share a search

Your query, filter rules, and sort rules are persisted in the URL. Bookmark the URL in your browser to easily return to it later, and share your search by sending the URL.