Object Matt doesn't show up in the Help search

Hi ​@matt_3679, 

I'm Seb, from the After Effects Team. This is a byproduct of intended behavior. The search in Help menu is a Mac OS only feature, controlled by the OS itself. It uses all the text strings in the Menus to find what you're searching.

What that means is that it cannot find Object Matte in any of the Menu string, and the behavior is correct. Even though Object Matte is applied as an effect, it is not an effect that can be applied like any other effect, it needs a selection from the Object Matte tool to initialize (where, for example, you can drag & drop a blur effect on any layer, because it doesn't need that initial selection).

Because Object Matte is a Tool that gets applied as an Effect, it is not listed in the Effects list, hence not apprearing in any Menu, hence not being found by the Mac Os search in the Help menu.

You can also open the Effects & Preset panel and notice that searching there won't show it up there either. 

To use Object Matte, you just need click on the Object Matte Tool in the toolbar. You can learn more in this help page that will take you through the steps: https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/object-matte.html

Hope this helps,
Seb

Sebastien Perier
After Effects Quality Engineering