How to View Your Captures in the Portal

Note that you cannot access your Portal from within the Page Vault Browser (Capture Mode)—you must use a regular web browser. For instructions to access the Portal, please see this article.

View an individual capture

In the Portal, you’ll see your folder structure displayed on the left-hand side. Select the folder you’d like to view, and a summary of the folders and captures contained in that folder will load with a summary of the capture’s basic metadata to the right.

To see a full preview of a single capture, click on the thumbnail of the capture—that will take you to the Capture Detail page. On the Capture Detail page, you can scroll down to view a rendering of the capture. From this page, you can also edit the notes associated with the capture.

Information shown on the Capture Detail page

  • Document title: The title provided by the website in the “Title” portion of the code. This typically shows up as the title you see on the tab name in a browser
  • Capture name: The name of the capture entered in capture mode. If you do not enter a custom name, it defaults to the website main URL plus the date and time.
  • Capture URL
  • Captured site IP
  • Page loaded at (UTC): time the page loaded (in case there is a lag between load and capture)
  • Capture timestamp (UTC): time the page was captured
  • Capture tool: The version of Page Vault Browser used for the capture
  • Page Vault server IP
  • Browser engine: Details of the Page Vault technology stack used
  • Operating system: Details of the Page Vault OS
  • User: the account used to make the capture
  • Notes: Any notes entered at capture or made after the capture. Notes do NOT appear on the PDF capture itself, they are only viewable in the Portal for your internal use.
  • Number of pages in the capture: This displays at the top of the full capture preview.

Page Overlap

One thing you may notice is that a portion of the prior page repeats at the top of the following page of the capture. By default, Page Vault Browser repeats 175 pixels from the prior page to allow you to verify that all of the content on the page have been collected.

If you want to change the amount of overlap produced, see our article on Advanced Options.

Folder Viewing Options

Thumbnail view (default)

The thumbnail view is our default folder view. Captures are shown in reverse chronological order (the most recently taken capture is shown at the top). You cannot sort captures in this view; it is most convenient when trying to see the capture thumbnail. If you sort on a field other than capture timestamp in table view, and then return to thumbnail view, the field selected for sorting will be retained.

Table view


You can also view your captures in a table form. The table has a smaller thumbnail, but allows you to sort captures based on the metadata fields like capture URL or document title.

If you sort on a field other than capture timestamp in table view, and then return to thumbnail view, the field selected for sorting will be retained.

Date Filter


You can also filter the captures in the folder based on dates. You can select to filter on either the date of the capture or the date of the underlying post (Estimated Post/Upload Date).

The underlying post date is currently only available for Facebook posts captured using the Post-by-Post method after October 2021; non-Facebook posts and captures made with Post-by-Post before October 2021 cannot be sorted by Estimated Post/Upload Date.

Updated on December 30, 2023
Can't find what you need?