Keyword search not finding the keyworded images

[BJC112389]

I have just spent several days keywording just over 6000 images I took of a music festival. I added the names of the musicians as keywords, sometimes just directly in the keywording box in the library module, and other times using the face pane. For most of the musicians, this seems to have worked just fine. However, for one of them, a keyword search returns just nine pictures. He's actually in hundreds. The same is true if I click on the keyword list. Yet when I select an image that has him in it, but which does not show up in the search results, there is his name among the keywords.

If I select one of these photos that has his name as a keyword, but which does not appear as a search result, delete his keyword from the image, then re-enter it, the image then appears in the search results.

What is going on? Can I fix this without re-keywording all the images with him in them?

[JohanElzenga · Accepted solution]

Is it possible that there is an almost invisible typo in those names? Think about a capital ‘i’ rather than an ‘l’, or a ’hard space’ (on a Macintosh you can type a ‘hard’, non-breaking space if you hold the option key while typing it)?

[BJC112389]

That may be correct. I ended up manually selecting all the images that had the particular musician in them, then in one mass action deleted and re-added the keyword (which I clicked on in the "recent keywords" list). I then unselected the group (having color-coded the set in case my idea didn't work), and ran the search again. This time it picked everything up. So my immediate problem is solved.

But one thing I did notice is that, when I had all the images selected, and thus all the keywords of all the images appeared in the keyword tags window, the musician's name appeared twice. In other words, what I had looked like "A, B, C, C, D," when I was expecting "A, B, C, D." I didn't examine the apparent duplication closely to see if there was some subtle difference between them. I just deleted them both and replaced them.

[BJC112389]

Ok. The problem was user error. As you suspected, I had spelled the name two different ways "Joaquim" as well as "Joachim," and just hadn't picked up on it.