Finding and restoring data

You might want to search for data files or folders in your research group, especially when the amount of data you are working with is growing or when you have many different research groups or folders that you work in. It is also possible to retrieve an earlier version (a revision) of a file, for example if you have accidently deleted a file. With the ‘search’ functionality in Yoda, you can do both.

Finding files and folders 

Follow these steps to search for files or folders in Yoda. 

1. Go to the Yoda web portal and sign in. 
2. On the top of the page, you will find a Search bar. You can select specific components in the drop-down menu to the left of the search bar. By default, you will search by filename.

Search by filename / search by folder

If you know (part of) the name of the file or folder you are looking for, use this as ‘Search term’.

A search by name will find files and folders with the search term in its name. Typing a series of letters will reveal all files and (sub)folders containing that series in the name. For example, searching on “er” will result in finding:

• “er”

• “Er”

• “Ergonomics”

• “Folder A”

Search by metadata 

The search by metadata will search in the contents of the fields in the Yoda metadata form. It reveals all fields containing your search term.

At first you will see the number of fields and hovering over it will show exactly which field contains the search term. 

Search by status 

You can also search by status. For example, if you wish to see the data packages that you have access to which have been submitted to the vault, select 'Submitted for vault'. Or if you want to see data packages that are published, select 'Published'.

Restoring previous file versions

Previous file versions (revisions) are important if you need to go back to an earlier version of your work. Yoda provides you with a temporary back-up functionality of these earlier versions. This is very useful and means that you can restore files yourself. 

Yoda saves a new revision of your data every time you save a file using the same name. Yoda does not overwrite the existing file but creates a new revision while the older revision is stored in a hidden location. This then becomes a previous file version that you can restore if needed. 

As time passes by, an increasing amount of the revisions will be deleted. This means that you can restore many revisions from the same day, fewer revisions from the last few days, even fewer revisions from a week back, etcetera. After 16 weeks, every revision older than 16 weeks is deleted. 

Follow these steps to restore older file versions: 

• Go to the Yoda web portal and sign in. 

• In the search bar on the top of the page, select ‘Search revision by name’. 

• Type the name of the file of which you want to restore a revision. 

• Click on the file you wish to restore. You will now see the file versions in the search results. 

• You can save the file version you wish to restore in various ways: 

  • under your own name in the same folder

  • with a different name

  • in another folder within the research group