# Search by file type finds only instances INSIDE documents where the string appears

**URL:** <https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/search-by-file-type-finds-only-instances-inside-documents-where-the-string-appears/64235>\
**Category:** DEVONthink\
**Created:** [May 2, 2021, 11:29pm UTC](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/search-by-file-type-finds-only-instances-inside-documents-where-the-string-appears/64235 "2021-05-02T23:29:34Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![dcw94945](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/9dc877/32.png) [@dcw94945](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/u/dcw94945)\
**Post date:** [May 2, 2021, 11:29pm UTC](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/search-by-file-type-finds-only-instances-inside-documents-where-the-string-appears/64235/1 "2021-05-02T23:29:34Z")

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Update: Solved. Thanks all

This shouldn’t be complicated but for some reason…

I am trying to search all open data bases for certain file types so that I can remove unsupported file types.

Example: Looking for Apple Pages documents. I search for the string \*.pages and all it returns are documents where the word “pages” appears in the name of the document (exclusive of/ignoring the extension) or in the document itself. (By “exclusive of/ignoring the extension” I mean that it doesn’t even find the docs with the extension even tho that is part of the file name. So a search for \*.pages does NOT find a document called Book\_Report.pages, but it does find doc called Book\_Report\_Pages.pdf. Same with .numbers or .rtfd, xml, .webarchive, etc.

I found a post where the tool Edit\>Find\>In Database was suggested. That doesn’t do anything at all.

TIA

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**Author:** ![BLUEFROG](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/user_avatar/discourse.devontechnologies.com/bluefrog/32/135_2.png) [@BLUEFROG](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/u/BLUEFROG)\
**Post date:** [May 2, 2021, 11:58pm UTC](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/search-by-file-type-finds-only-instances-inside-documents-where-the-string-appears/64235/2 "2021-05-02T23:58:34Z")

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A screen cap of a search would be helpful.

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**Author:** ![DTLow](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/user_avatar/discourse.devontechnologies.com/dtlow/32/18161_2.png) [@DTLow](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/u/DTLow)\
**Post date:** [May 3, 2021, 12:20am UTC](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/search-by-file-type-finds-only-instances-inside-documents-where-the-string-appears/64235/3 "2021-05-03T00:20:49Z")

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> [@dcw94945](#):
>
> Looking for Apple Pages documents

search extension==pages  
 ![Screen Shot 2021-05-02 at 17.20.29](https://devontech-discourse.s3.dualstack.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/original/3X/5/0/5052f23dc7492b57b10ed118774da83dd3c5247e.png)

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**Author:** ![pete31](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/d26b3c/32.png) [@pete31](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/u/pete31)\
**Post date:** [May 3, 2021, 12:44am UTC](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/search-by-file-type-finds-only-instances-inside-documents-where-the-string-appears/64235/4 "2021-05-03T00:44:01Z")

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> [@DTLow](#):
>
> search extension==pages

In case of Markdown `*.md` this didn’t find (all?) Markdown records for a very long time, it was necessary to use `filename:>.md` instead. However, testing `extension==md` again it now does work as expected.

So if you think that `extension==` doesn’t yield correct results it’s always possible to search by using `filename:>`

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**Author:** ![cgrunenberg](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/user_avatar/discourse.devontechnologies.com/cgrunenberg/32/7172_2.png) [@cgrunenberg](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/u/cgrunenberg)\
**Post date:** [May 3, 2021, 8:33am UTC](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/search-by-file-type-finds-only-instances-inside-documents-where-the-string-appears/64235/5 "2021-05-03T08:33:16Z")

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> [@dcw94945](#):
>
> So a search for \*.pages does NOT find a document called Book\_Report.pages

Wildcards are applied to words (but not to complete strings), therefore this is identical to only searching for the word _pages_.

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**Author:** ![DTLow](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/user_avatar/discourse.devontechnologies.com/dtlow/32/18161_2.png) [@DTLow](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/u/DTLow)\
**Post date:** [May 3, 2021, 11:32pm UTC](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/search-by-file-type-finds-only-instances-inside-documents-where-the-string-appears/64235/6 "2021-05-03T23:32:21Z")

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Hope your search problems have been resolved  
I was wondering about your comment on removing Apple Pages “unsupported file types”

Why are you removing these documents?  
Apple Pages are my go to format for word processing and I store them in DT  
It renders well for viewing both in DT and DTTG, and easily edits with the open in function