Document Library Search Tips
When searching for documents, there are several techniques you
can use to improve the accuracy of your search results. These terms allow you
to formulate partial word, boolean and phrase matching search queries. Below are examples of
the query language that is used to perform searches in the document
library. You can also combine the techniques below in a single search to
further refine your query.
Simple word searches
If you enter multiple words for your search query the
results will be
documents containing one or more of the words in your query. Queries are
not case sensitive, so they will match the word(s) only based on spelling.
Documents matching more of the words will appear first in the search results.
Because a document only need to match one of the words you specify,
you may find that your search results contain irrelevant documents.
Example: housing landlord rent
This search query would find all documents containing one or more of the
words specified.
Refining your results to match multiple words
Using the
and search
term between the
words you are searching for will limit the search results only to documents
containing all of the specified words.
Example: housing and landlord and rent
This search query would find only documents containing all of the
words specified.
Explicitly omitting results
You might also want to omit documents containing certain words.
Using the
and not search term between the
words you are searching for will omit any documents containing the word
you specify.
Example: housing and landlord and not descrimination
This search query would find documents containing the first two words
and omit any documents also containing the last word.
Searching for phrases
If the word combination you are searching for always occurs
in a particular phrase,
you will get better search results using a phrase matching query. To match a particular
phrase, place it in double quotation marks. In order for a document to match, the
words in the phrase must occur in the document in the same order as they appear in the query.
Example: "fair housing"
This search query would find only documents containing the phrase specified.
Matching partial words
You can match multiple word forms simultaneously using
partial word matching. If, for
instance you want to guarantee that all documents containing any form of a word
(plural, singular, past tense, etc.) are found, you can use the asteriks (*) and
question mark (?) wildcard characters in your search queries. The question
mark matches any single character and the asterik matches zero or more characters.
Example: descriminat*
This query would find documents containing the words "descriminate", "descriminated",
"descrimination", etc.
