Remote File Search

A website you rebuilt from an old one — or one you pasted code into — can still show pictures, link documents or play videos that live on someone else's server. Your pages work today, but they depend on that server staying up and keeping the files where they are. Remote File Search finds those files and moves the ones you choose into your own website.

Opening it

Open the builder's main menu (the ☰ button at the top of the left rail) and choose Tools → Remote File Search. A panel opens in the bottom-right corner of the builder, titled Remote Files Found. Every time you open it, it looks at your website again, so it always shows what your pages use right now.

After you start from an existing website, the panel also opens by itself once — the first time you open the builder after the first build has finished, if any files are still on another server. Closing it, or moving files, counts as having seen it; after that it only opens when you ask for it.

What it lists

Each file appears once, however many pages use it, as its name and the server it is on — for example menu-2024.pdf — media.example.com. The count at the top is the whole website's; the list shows the first twenty and loads more as you scroll towards the end (or choose Show more). It lists:

• Images and SVGs — in pictures, image sets for different screen sizes, and backgrounds.
• Documents — PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and similar files your pages link to.
• Video and audio files.

Fonts and embedded content — a YouTube or Vimeo player, a map, a script — are not listed: those are services your page uses rather than files it keeps.

If nothing is on another server, the panel says so.

On a website with a great many pages or files, looking takes longer than a moment. The panel keeps looking in the background and shows how many of your files it has checked; you can keep working, and the list appears when it is done. If the search cannot finish, the panel says so and offers Try again.

Moving files

Select all is checked when the panel opens, and so is every file below it. It means every remote file on the website — including the ones further down the list that you have not scrolled to — so the button reads, for example, Move 3,859 files. Untick anything you would rather keep linking to where it is, then choose the button. Cancel closes the panel and changes nothing — your pages keep using the remote addresses, which is fine as long as that server keeps serving them.

Moving runs in the background, so you can keep working; thousands of files take a while, and the move carries on whether or not the panel stays open. The panel shows a progress bar with how many have moved so far — "1,240 of 3,859 moved" — the file arriving now, and then each file that could not be moved with the reason, and the most recent ones that did with their new address in your website. Close the panel and open it again later to see where the move has got to.

• Each file goes into your media library by what it is: images into images/, videos into videos/, and documents and audio into files/. Photos are resized and converted the same way an upload of your own is.
• Every place your pages used the old address is updated to the new one for you — a path inside your website such as /images/hero.webp in place of the old https://… address — no message to the assistant needed. The change is saved in each file's revision history, so it can be undone like any other edit.
• A file that can't be moved — its server doesn't answer, the file is gone, or it is too large — is named with the reason, and its pages keep the remote address. The other files still move.

A single file in your website can be up to 50 MB. A remote file larger than that is listed but can't be ticked, and shows Too large, stays remote.

Who can use it

Anyone who can edit the website can use Remote File Search, on every plan. Team members with the Viewer role can't open the builder, so they can't use it either.