SEARCHING FOR INFORMATION

Search tips
Conducting a successful search can be an art. Because of the complexities of sifting through so much information for something very specific, you may not always get what you are looking for on the first try. In general, be sure that the databases you want to search are full-text indexed, and use the search features in Notes to narrow down your search as much as possible.

All tips except the last two apply to both full-text searching and Domain Search.

Be specific

Use words you think will be in only the documents you want. Searching for "Siamese" in a pets discussion usually gives you fewer results than "cats," and they'll be closer to what you want.

Use double quotes to search for an exact phrase

"Cats are choosy eaters" finds that exact phrase. Single quotes do not work.

Learn a few basic operators

If the database is full-text indexed, there are certain words and characters called operators that Notes reads as instructions rather than words. You may want to learn some basic operators such as OR, AND, or NOT and use them in searches.

Select "Use Word Variants" and "Fuzzy search"

These are selections available when you open the "More" section of the Search bar. They widen your search, making it more comprehensive. See the topic on search options. Once these are activated, you can try using base words, or parts of words - "pair" to find "pairing" or "pairs"; "?ray" to find "gray," "stray," or "bray."

Use different words with the same meaning

Let's say you're looking for documents about cats, and your results include fewer documents than you want. Try "cats OR felines OR kittens." The OR operator finds documents containing any of these.

Keep an eye on the number of results you get back

In the upper left corner of the Search bar, Notes shows the number of results. If you have too many or too few results, try reformulating your search.

If there are too many results, try using AND. If there are too few results, try OR.

cats OR dogs Returns documents with one or the other (returns more results)

cats AND dogs Returns documents with both (returns fewer results)

Use the "fill out example form" condition

This is a powerful way of doing a complicated full-text (not Domain) search. You can specify to a high degree what documents you want returned. You don't need to fill in every field in the example form - blank fields match all documents. For best results, fill in only the one or two fields that are most specific to your search.

Note When you use an example form, Notes still searches documents created with all forms in the database. If you want to limit your search to documents created with the form you use as an example, add a By Form condition and specify the same form.

Sorting results using view columns

This tip is for full-text search only. If you're used to sorting a view with the triangle icons at the top of each column, select either "show all documents" or "keep current order" as your sorting option in the "More" section of the Search bar.

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See Also