Search and filter in the Timeline, Project, and Effects & Presets panels

The Project, Timeline, and Effects & Presets panels each contain search fields that you can use to filter items in the panel.

To place the insertion point in a search field, click in the search field.
To place the insertion point in the search field for the active panel, choose File > Find or press Ctrl+F (Windows) or Command+F (Mac OS).
To clear the search field, click the button that appears to the right of the text in the search field.

When you type in the search field, the list of items in the panel is filtered, showing some items and hiding others. Only items with entries that match the search query that you’ve typed are shown. The folders, layers, categories, or property groups that contain the matched items are also shown, to provide context.

In general, only text in columns that are shown is searched for this filtering operation. For example, you may need to show the Comments column to search and filter by the contents of comments. (See Columns.)

If one or more layers are selected in a composition, the filtering operation in the Timeline panel only affects selected layers. In this case, unselected layers are not filtered out (hidden) if they don’t match the search query. However, if no layers are selected in the composition, the filtering operation applies to all layers in the composition. This behavior matches that for showing and hiding of layer properties by pressing their property shortcut keys. (See Show or hide properties in the Timeline panel.)

Clearing the search field and ending the search causes expanded folders and property groups to collapse (close). Therefore, it’s easier to work with the items that are found by the filter operation if you operate on them before you clear the search field and end the search.

If the text that you type in the search field in the Project or Timeline panel contains spaces, the spaces are treated as AND operators. For example, typing dark solid matches footage items or layers named Dark Red Solid and Dark Gray Solid. Spaces are treated as space characters in the search field in the Effects & Presets panel. For example, typing change color matches the Change Color effect, but not the Change To Color effect.

Examples of searches in the Project panel

To show only footage items for which the name or comment contains a specific string, start typing the string.
To show only footage items for which the source file is missing, type the entire word missing. (This search works whether or not the File Path column is shown, which is an exception to the general rule that only shown columns are searched.)
To show only unused footage items, type the entire word unused.
To show only used footage items, type the entire word used.
To show only Cineon footage items, type Cineon with the Type column shown.

Examples of searches in the Timeline panel

To show only layers and properties for which the name or comment contains a specific string, type the string. For example, type starch to show pins created by the Puppet Starch tool.
To show only properties that have an expression that uses a specific method, type the method name.
To show only layers with a specific label, type the label name.

Click the swatch for a label to see the context menu that lists the label names. Alternatively, drag the right edge of the Label column heading to expand the column to read the label names.