Your day to day
Finding something from years ago
When you remember neither the name, nor the date, nor who uploaded it.
Something from three years ago is searched for differently from last week's. You do not remember the name, the date is approximate, and whoever uploaded it may have left. What you almost always remember is something it said inside.
Where to start, in order
- 1
An identifier that does not change
A tax ID, a registration, a policy or case number. It finds fastest.
- 2
The other party's name
The company or person it was with. Better remembered than anything else.
- 3
The matter it belonged to
The site, the client, the project. And from there, inside.
- 4
And only last, the date
As a narrowing filter, not a starting point.
Important
Searching by date first is the commonest mistake and the biggest time sink. The date you remember is usually off by months, and filtering on it discards exactly what you are looking for without you noticing.
If it does not appear
| Possible cause | How to rule it out |
|---|---|
| You are in another organisation | Check at the top: the silliest and commonest cause |
| You lack permission to see it | Ask an administrator |
| It was a scan uploaded without reading | Search the filename or the matter |
| It was never here | It may be in someone's email from back then |
Watch out
The third row misleads most. A scanned document uploaded without reading is not searchable by content: it exists, but it does not answer what you are looking for inside it.
So it does not happen again
Worth knowing
If you find it after twenty minutes, spend two more making it findable: it is the only way the next time does not cost another twenty.
›Can I search by an extracted value?
Yes, and it is the most precise: amounts, expiry dates, identifiers.
›What if the uploader has left?
Their history remains; what left is the person, not what they did.
›Can I search old scanned documents?
If they were read on upload, yes. If not, they can be reprocessed.
A real case
The situation
Someone searches for a four-year-old contract by date and cannot find it.
What you do
- Searches the other party's tax ID
What you get
It appears in seconds, with a real date five months off from what they remembered.
The situation
A client asks about a shipment from four years ago and the archive sits in three places.
What you do
- Searches by something in the content rather than by date
- Checks the complete file with its history
What you get
You answer with what existed then rather than with what is remembered.
The situation
Old scans do not appear in searches.
What you do
- Checks whether they were processed on upload
What you get
The history becomes searchable.
The situation
The search uses the supplier's name from back then, which has changed.
What you do
- Searches by the document's content
What you get
The name change stops hiding the archive.
The situation
The document was migrated and lost its context.
What you do
- Checks which file it ended up attached to
What you get
You reach it from where the question starts.
The situation
Nobody knows whether the document was kept that long.
What you do
- Checks the retention policy applied
What you get
You know what to expect to find.
This article answers
- find an old document
- i do not remember the filename
- find something from three years ago
- searching without knowing the date