The skills filter says it is preparing

What the message means and what to use meanwhile.

Occasionally a filter reports that it is not ready:

Skills filter is preparing

Skills filter is not active yet

Some filters are backed by derived indexes that are rebuilt in the background. While a rebuild runs, that one filter is unavailable so it cannot return a half-built answer. Every other filter keeps working normally, and your counts on those stay accurate.

What to do

  1. Remove the filter and re-run. The rest of the filter set is unaffected.
  2. Approximate it while you wait. The keyword filter matches what a company does and is often a better proxy than a skills tag anyway, and the title filter carries most of the intent that people put into skills.
  3. Retry later in the day. Rebuilds are not manual, so there is nothing to trigger on your side.

If the message persists for more than a day on the same account, send support@argorant.com the filter set you were using. Do not work around it by exporting more than you need: an export is priced per contact, and a wide export is a permanent cost for a temporary problem.

Still stuck? support@argorant.com