Can't Find Your designs in the Silhouette Studio Library? Here's Why

You know you own the file. You bought it, or you made it yourself, and now you need it. You type what you are pretty sure it was called into the search bar, and you get zero search results. 

Here's the issue - and it's not that you have too many files or that the search is broken. It's that files you created or imported, specifically, are simply missing the information that would let a search find them. 

Your files came in with almost nothing attached

Every design in your library has the ability to carry a bunch of info and keywords about it. Aside from the file name, there fields for artist, description, category and keywords. The search looks at each of those fields to generate results. 

Here's the issue - files that came from the Silhouette Design store already have most of that info filled in for you. 

BUT files you created yourself or imported from other sources, like So Fontsy, have no data except whatever you named the file. Basically they have a title.  There's no category or description or keywords. 

And what's even more limiting is the search will only pull results if the FIRST part of the title matches the search. 

For example, this file is called BigPurpleFlower.png. That title was probably just auto-created when the file was imported directly to the library. 

If I search "purple" I get no hits for it. Same if I search Flower. 

This file only shows up in search results if I search "Big". 

The reason is because even though "purple" and "flower" are in the title, the title starts with "big". Yes, it's wonky.

No way would I ever search big to find this flower file.

See the issue here...

Filling in details to make your Silhouette library searchable

So the fix is going into each file - yes individually - by right clicking "Show Properties" and adding a better title and description at a minimum.  You can also add keywords. 

Keywords let you build your own way of organizing, using the words you actually think in - like sublimation, DTF, stickers. Those aren't categories that are available so you can just use them as keywords to surface your files. 

Adding details to all three fields will make your entire library genuinely easy to search. 

I walk through all of it in this month's new Silhouette U video on organizing your Silhouette Studio library.  I'll show you where the properties panel is hiding, how to add keywords, the settings that make your library searchable in the first place, and the one thing to know about removing a keyword that is pulling up the wrong files. You can watch the full walkthrough here as a Silhouette U member or preview it before you join. 

And if you are tired of losing craft time hunting for files you already own, that is exactly the kind of thing Silhouette U is built to fix. Real how-to videos organized by skill level, plus same day help from an actual person here in the US when you are stuck. Come join us in Silhouette U.

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