Using Pseudo Tags in Drive

[david531]

Hello, I would like to be able to do some very basic document tagging. I have found that if I tag a file #round in the description field, and then search on #round, the file with the tag in the description doesn't even come back as close to the first hit, if it comes back at all.

To make matters worse, even if I search on "#round", using quotes for exact syntax search, every file with the word round comes back whether there is a # symbol or not. 

Any suggested workarounds so that google limits the search to the exact syntax, i.e. "#pound"? Ideally I would like to place them in the file description field on Drive website.

Thanks!!!

[StephenHind]

@david531 yes Google Drive Search indexes and searches the description field but I guess it's ignoring the # out of the search (we tried the same in Google Sites pages and the search engine ignores the #).  Just in case you weren't aware Google Drive now offers labels if that helps (it should as it was designed for this purpose) - see: 

• Manage Drive labels
• Add labels to files in Google Drive

If you still want to use the description you can but avoid using the # and use something else (in Google Sites we used tag:whatever instead - you can see an example on https://www.steegle.com/google-sites/how-to/images and look for the tag:images text that's a link to search to find other pages with tag:images on).

[david531]

Thank you Stephen! Yes I am aware of labels and think they are great for structured metadata, but unfortunately they don't support any form of tagging. I am used to tags and find it so useful to throw 3 or 4 tags on an item and then be able to find it later based on those tags. Your company's website is very impressive. FYI the start of the second paragraph on the home page is missing the word "are" - "We also the no 1 specialist in developing..."

[StephenHind · Accepted solution]

@david531 did you try using Labels?  I've just replicated something similar to what you mentioned and the advanced search lets you search for a "hashtag" in that label:

[david531]

I did test it, decided against it initially, so thank you for bring it back to my attention, I now realize it's a better solution since search allows the user to limit searches to a specific label, which in turn also make it unnecessary to prefix each tag with "tag:".

Thanks!

[StephenHind]

I'm glad you've found it useful: there are all kinds of fields you can add, so if you're adding the same tags over and over you can use an option list and this may make it quicker for you.

[StephenHind]

@david531 PS thanks for the heads-up on the typo: now fixed!