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How to search a file/folder with the name containing a hyphen ("-")?

I found that Dropbox treats hyphens as spaces when searching for a file/folder. So if I have a file named "a-b-c", it cannot be easily found because Dropbox treats the query as "a b c", which reveals results containing "a" or "b" or "c".

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Hannah

Hey @Herman T.1, thanks for bringing this to our attention.

Can you just clarify if you're using the search function on our website or the mobile app?

And say you search for file 'a-b-c', using the hyphens, while searching. Does the desired file/folder not come up at all in the results?

If you're on the website, please try from a different browser or an incognito/private browsing window, to see if there's a difference.

Let me know how it goes.

Herman T.1

It happens to both Google Chrome and the Dropbox android app. This is not any browser issues. Depending on how many files/folders matching the result, it may or may not come up on the result.

Hannah

I see, thanks for the update here, Herman!

May I actually reach out to you via email, so we can look into this a bit more closely?

Herman T.1

sure

Hannah

Perfect, I just sent you an email, so make sure to check your inbox, Herman.

Have a great day!

FrustratedUser3

Is there some reason you guys always send the answers to people via email instead of posting the solutions on the forum? It is ridiculous that I have the same question, but now I have to wait for support to send me the answer that was already given to someone else.

Herman T.1

Did you really get the answer? I actually didn't have a solution. They kept asking me to reproduce it, send them this and that logs, clear cookies, etc. It's pretty useless because it's a simple issue that they can easily reproduce in-house...

FrustratedUser3

Of course not, lol. I should have clarified. Sorry about that.

Dropbox search is a unreliable at best. My org basically doesn't use it anymore. We index the files through the API, which works 10000x better.

rhut

Hi, I'm a product manager on search at Dropbox.

So we do drop hyphens and I'm working with the eng team to resolve that issue. But one hack you could try with our new search operators is being able to use quotes to get a bit closer to what you're looking for. For example, "a-b-c" -> should return you terms that are in that exact sequence. Of course, you'll still get results that have spaces between the 3, but hoping this may bring you slightly closer to the functionality you need.

Let me know if that works for you and will keep you all updated on the hyphen functionality.

Herman T.1

Unfortunately that doesn't help. I have a folder and a file with the name "a-b-c-d": https://ibb.co/6XkC4qz

None returned from the search result.

Search result: https://ibb.co/yX1KMV1

rhut

That should not be happening, let me talk to the team and get back to you with an answer!