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johnrellis
Legend
December 20, 2011

P: Issue in text filter Caption Ends With

  • December 20, 2011
  • 27 replies
  • 1582 views

The text filter:

Caption Ends With "ab"

matches a photo with caption "xab" but not with caption "aab".

27 replies

johnrellis
Legend
June 13, 2025

@Patrick Cunningham, there is an open bug report about Starts With and Ends With, acknowledged by Adobe:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-bugs/p-starts-with-text-filter-on-captions-or-filename-incorrectly-matches-words/idi-p/14729614

 

The original bug was fixed many years ago in LR 6 or 7 (I think), but then it regressed back to the buggy behavior in LR 13.3.

 

"I want to find pictures which have a caption which contains only a certain phrase, eg: "Trafalgar Square, London, England." but NOT "Trafalgar Square, London, England. A man walking with his dog.""

 

While you can refine particular searches using smart collections (e.g. "contains words Trafalgar Square and doesn't contain walking his dog"), in general, there's nothing in smart collections and filters that will solve this general issue.  Consider using the Any Filter plugin, which has correctly working Starts With and Ends With, as well as exact match and many other operators that LR lacks and the ability to search 880 different fields. It's not as convenient as having it all built-in, but it gets the job done.

Participating Frequently
June 13, 2025

@areohbee Thank you for this explanation.

 

However, on the basis of reasonbably expected behaviours, this should still be considered as a bug. In my latest case, I want to find pictures which have a caption which contains only a certain phrase, eg: "Trafalgar Square, London, England." but NOT "Trafalgar Square, London, England. A man walking with his dog.". In the absence of an "Is" or "Is exactly" option in the dropdown list, I logically used "Ends With" "Trafalgar Square, London, England.". Which of course doesn't work, although entirely logical.

 

Programmers need to deliver on what is logical to the end user, not what is logical in programming terms.

 

Does anyone have an idea how to filter for what I need?

johnrellis
Legend
January 10, 2025

@richardplondon: "unsafe link was for something called "space urchin""

 

Ah, the link to the late plugin developer Rob Cole's web site included in this post:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-bugs/p-issue-in-text-filter-caption-ends-with/idc-p/12276727#M9017

 

It appears the expired domain name was acquired by a spammy link redirector that sells such redirects to sleazy advertisers, such as sellers of health supplements.

Community Expert
January 10, 2025

unsafe link was for something called "space urchin" - my curiosity got better of me, but I think my anti-malware blocked all the potentially bad stuff that resulted

johnrellis
Legend
January 10, 2025

@richardplondon: "some very old posts in this longstanding thread contain external weblinks which since been nastily compromised - great care please! Links within Adobe / Photoshop.com forums not of the same concern."

 

Are you referring to the feedback.photoshop.com links? They referred to the old "feedback" site for the Lightroom and Photoshop products and now redirect to community.adobe.com.   That's not very useful to readers, but they're not "compromised" (e.g. link to malware sites).

johnrellis
Legend
January 10, 2025

@Rikk Flohr: Photography: "I checked this bug after seeing you reference it in another post. This was fixed in 7.0 in 2017. Are you saying this is not fixed?"

 

I just double-checked LR 14.1.1 / Mac OS, and the bug is still present. See this screen recording:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/kyk53na57b5hy4dqnmx9v/caption-ends-with-bug.2025-01-09.mp4?rlkey=xzaif82qcfvefilga3p8zf2is&dl=0

 

I tested previous versions, and it worked properly in 13.2 but broke in 13.3.  LR 13.3 also broke a different aspect of Starts With and Ends With:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-bugs/p-starts-with-text-filter-on-captions-or-filename-incorrectly-matches-words/idi-p/14729614

 

It appears that LR 13.3 reverted to old buggy behavior that was fixed in 8.3 thereabouts:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-bugs/p-starts-with-text-filter-on-captions-or-filename-incorrectly-matches-words/idi-p/14729614 

 

 

 

Community Expert
January 8, 2025

word to the wise: some very old posts in this longstanding thread contain external weblinks which since been nastily compromised - great care please! Links within Adobe / Photoshop.com forums not of the same concern. 

Rikk Flohr_Photography
Community Manager
January 8, 2025

John, I checked this bug after seeing you reference it in another post. This was fixed in 7.0 in 2017. Are you saying this is not fixed? 

Rikk Flohr: Adobe Photography Org
bhargaveede
Adobe Employee
Adobe Employee
April 30, 2018
Hi Stanislav,

Thanks for reporting the issue and also suggesting the idea.
We'll discuss about your idea internally.

Thanks,
Bhargav
johnrellis
Legend
March 14, 2017
A very similar bug with "contains words" was fixed in CC 2015.0 / 6.0: https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/contains_words_bug_big_mallard_ducks?topic-re... .   This was the "big mallard ducks" bug first reported in LR 3.