You don't need to manually search through a long list of folders and files to locate what you're looking for. If you know the file name, the folder name, or the author's name, you can simply search using this information. If you only know a keyword inside the content of a file, you can also search for it in Zoho WorkDrive.
You can apply filters to further narrow down your search results. This can save you a lot of time when working on a range of projects.
Search for a file or folder
1. Go to your Zoho WorkDrive account.
2. Click the
Search
icon
in the top-right corner of the screen.
3. Type a keyword into the search bar.
As you type, the top 20 matches found for the keyword will appear below. You can scroll down to see the Team Folders, folders, and files found for the search.
What's included in matches:
- Files and folders that have the file, folder, or author name matching with the keyword will be shown.
- Team Folders that have the team folder name or name of the user who created the team folder matching with the keyword will also be shown.
4. Press the Enter key or click the
Show All Results
tab at the bottom of the search results.
A new search screen with filters will open
What's included in all results:
- Files that have content matching with the entire keyword will also be listed here. These results won't be shown as matches when you type keywords in the search bar. All word documents, presentations, spreadsheets, PDF files, or text files (including zip files) will be searched for any keyword match in their content.
- Team Folders, if found as matches in step three, will not be listed here.
- Files that have image text matching with the entire keyword will be listed.
- Files that have image objects matching with the entire keyword will be listed.
5. Add filters at the top of search results to narrow down your search further.
All Location
: Filter results based on their location from: My Folders, Shared with Me, and Team Folders. To choose a team folder, select the team first, then select a team folder in it.
All File Types
: Filter results based on folders and file type: documents, spreadsheets, presentations, images, videos, etc.
All Dates
: Filter results based on the date filters: Today, Yesterday, Last 7 Days, Last Month, or set a custom date.
6. Click on a file name to open it, or hover your mouse over the file and select
GO TO FOLDER
to go its location. To open a folder, click on its name.
Search within a folder
You can quickly find your files by searching directly inside a particular Team Folder, My Folders, or a sub-folder inside these folders.
- Go to your Zoho WorkDrive account.
- Select My Folders or a Team Folder in the left pane.
- Click the dropdown arrow next to My Folders at the top-left and select Search in My Folders.
For a Team Folder, click the dropdown arrow next to the Team Folder name at the top-left and select Search in <teamfoldername>.

- Type a keyword into the search bar.
As you type, the top 20 matches found for the keyword will appear below. You can scroll down to see the files and folders found for the search.
- Press Enter or click the Show All Results tab at the bottom of the search results.
A new search screen with filters will open.
- Add filters at the top of search results to narrow down your search further.
- Click on a file name to open it, or hover your mouse over the file and select GO TO FOLDER to go its location. To open a folder, click on its name.
You can also search inside a sub-folder from your My Folders or a Team Folder. To do this, go to your My Folders or a Team Folder, then open a sub folder, then right-click and select
Search in {sub-folder name}.
Note: When the Templates filter is not applied, templates will not be shown in search results.
Searching text within images - Optical Character Recognition (OCR)
This feature
extracts text from all your images, i.e, from image files as well as from documents where images have been added. Texts will be extracted from images and converted into searchable metadata through the method of
Optical Character Recognition (OCR).
For example, if you use the search term "car", the OCR feature will fetch all images and documents where the word "car" occurs in images.
Supported encoding for text extraction: UTF-8
Supported image formats - jpeg, png, jpg, tiff, tif, bmp
Supported document formats - pdf, docx, doc, pptx, ppt
- Only printed texts in images can be searched in WorkDrive (hand-written texts are not supported).
- Texts in images cannot be searched using the Finder option.
- If a font used in a file doesn’t conform to UTF-8 standards, any text content in that font cannot be extracted. WorkDrive doesn’t support adding new font styles for text extraction.
OCR Limitations
- For PDF files, only the first 20 images in the first 10 pages will be indexed for OCR search.
- For docx and pptx file formats, only 20 images will be indexed for OCR search.
- OCR search indexing might take up to 3 days to be processed and ready for search.
Searching objects in images (Object Detection)
With WorkDrive's Object Detection feature, you can search for image files based on the actual objects present in them.
For example, if you use the search term "laptop", the Object Detection feature will fetch all images that have the object laptop in them.
- A search result is organized based on its relevancy score compared to all other results. Files with matching metadata (filename and author's name) are shown at the top of the search results, followed by files with matching content (text, image text and image object).
- Searching texts and objects in images is supported in both web and mobile apps.
- OCR and Object Detection will not be done on files uploaded before February 2020.