Multi word keywords filtering

[milans47650802]

What is the easiest quickest way to filter for all photos without the keyword tag "west virginia" assuming that the catalog also contains photos with "virginia" and/or "west" in other keyword tags?

[richardplondon]

Edit this particular keyword to "westvirginia" so that it becomes unambiguous. That will update it across all the photos where this, as opposed to either "west" or "virginia", has been applied. Now you can make a Smart Collection with the criterion: keywords do not include "westvirginia".  Do what you need to do. Optionally, edit the space back into this same keyword (though personally I wouldn't do so - I might add "West Virginia" as a synonym keyword for "westvirginia", if it was important to show it that way on an export). 

[johnrellis · Accepted solution]

[This post contains embedded images that don't appear in email. View the post in your Web browser to see the images.]

There's no easy way to do this exactly, due to LR's longstanding deficiencies. You can easily get reasonably close in most situations and you can do it exactly with a few extra steps.

As you probably have discovered, "Keywords Don't Contain west virginia" is equivalent to the boolean condition ("Keywords Don't Contain west" AND "Keywords Don't Contain virginia").  And the Don't Contain operator does partial string match, not full word match and not full keyword match.   So "Keywords Don't contain west virginia" will exclude photos with the keyword "west texas" and it will exclude photos with the keyword "virginian tv show". 

Similarly for "Keywords Contains Words !west !virginia".

You can use this smart collection:

This will match all photos that don't have the word "west" and don't have the word "virginia" somewhere in their keywords (doing "word" match, not partial string match). So this will exclude photos that have "west virginia", but it will also exclude a photo with the two keywords "kings park west"" and "virginia".  But this may be good enough for you.   

Note, however, that smart collections and filtering treat stacks, folders, and collections differently (but there are ways to cope).

Here's a recipe for doing what you want exactly:

1. Select All Photos in the Catalog Panel on the left.

2. In the Keyword List panel, hover over the right end of the keyword "west virginia" and click the right arrow:

3. This will open the Library Filter bar's Metadata browser with a Keyword Column with "west virginia" selected. This filters for exactly those photos containing the keyword "west virginia".

4. Do Edit > Select All.

5. Turn off filtering by doing Library > Enable Filters (causing that to be unchecked). Now all photos will be showing, but only those containing the keyword "west virginia" will be selected.

6. Do Edit > Invert Selection. Now only those photos not containing the keyword "west virginia" will be selected. Add those to the Quick Collection or some other collection if you want to save the list for a while.

If you find yourself wanting exact keyword match a lot, try out the Any Filter plugin.

[Use the reply button under the first post to ensure replies sort properly.]

[milans47650802]

thank you for the workourund!!! I like this one the most from all the other options. I don't like the idea of renaming half of the world to accomodate adobe, let's hope they can improve in the future ..:)

thanks again!

[johnrellis]

"This will match all photos that don't have the word "west" and don't have the word "virginia" somewhere in their keywords (doing "word" match, not partial string match)."

Correction: This should read, 'This will match all photos that don't have the word "west" OR don't have the word "virginia" somewhere in their keywords (doing "word" match, not partial string match).'