You can search for assets using text contained within them. You don't have to do anything to set this up; it just works 🙂. We call this text extraction.

To search for an asset by the text it contains, just enter the text into the Dash search bar.

Dash will search text found in images. For example, I knew the image I wanted contained the phrase "Low maintenance" but I couldn't remember the name of the image. Simply by typing "maintenance" into the search box, I was shown the right assets:

Dash will search any text that appears visually in a video. We identify both static text (like titles, captions or text on objects in the video) and dynamic text (such as animated text in graphics). For example, I know that I have a video that contains animations with beverage cans that say "kombucha" - searching for this word will show me that asset:

💡 Tip: In addition to written text, Dash will also search video transcriptions so you can find videos using words or phrases spoken in them.

This also works within PDFs. Below, I knew I had an ad PDF containing the word "smashing", and so searching for that word yields the results I wanted:

You can search for text within Microsoft Office documents (*.doc, *.docx). For example, I knew a doc I had uploaded contained the word "first aider", and searching for that returned our Mental Health Awareness Week document:

It is not currently possible to disable text extraction. If you are having trouble with this feature, or with finding the right assets, please do have a chat with us via the in-app chat and the team will be happy to help you find a solution.

It isn't currently possible to search within spreadsheets and presentations. We are always adding more supported filetypes, and so if this is important to you, let us know via the in-app chat!

If you've entered a search term that appears within a document but that document isn't returning in the results, first check that the document is of a supported type (refer to the rest of this article). If it is a supported type, it could be because the term is not found within the first 100,000 characters of the document, which is the limit of our text in asset search.

Yes, AI-enhanced searches still search for text in images and videos, and exact text matches should appear higher in the results than other assets that match the text in other ways (e.g. assets that visually match the search term).

In-video text recognition and video transcription apply to videos uploaded from 30 September 2026 onwards. Previously uploaded videos can still be found using their filenames, tags and other metadata.

If you’d like previously uploaded videos included, get in touch via our in-app chat.