Searching the site
The search box in the top right appears at all times.
By default, it will search the entire site.
Expanding or Narrowing your search
Once you hit the Search button the search results page is displayed. You can change this by altering the Restrict Results By criteria. For example:
- Type in the name of the section of the site that you want to search through.
Search Tips
Search Filters
After you have run a search you will see search filters displayed to the left of the search results. Here are some of the more frequently used:
Search Filters - Show
- You can set this to Documents if you are looking for more official knowledge base advice.
- Set this to Discussions if you think your question may have been posted within the forums before.
Search Filters - Last Modified
- You can restrict the results to those items which have been modified within the past year down to within 1 day.
- In addition, by using the "Sort By" drop down below this field you can sort your search results to show the most recently modified content at the top.
Search Strings - Best Practice
There are search tips available below your search phrase on the search results screen. Below we have listed the most useful of these.
Search for specific words
This is the most basic search mode, and is also the default. Simply enter your search terms to see content containing all the specified words in any order.
Search for phrases
If you enclose a phrase in quotes, your search will return only content where the words in quotes occur next to each other and in the same order. For instance, specifying "black cat" will return text where this phrase appears exactly as quoted, such as "our black cat brings us luck", but will not return "the cat was hiding in the black box".
Note: Content searches are case-insensitive
Search for content with words containing certain letter sequences
The wildcard character * matches any number of non-whitespace characters when it is placed at the end of a word or within a word in the query. You can use the following examples to search for multiplication or concatenation.
mult*
- Matches content containing the words multiplication, multiple, multimodal, multitude etc.
con*ion
- Matches content containing the words contagion, concatenation etc.
Note:A wildcard cannot be used at the beginning of a word, and it can't be used as a standalone word.
Compound expressions using boolean operators
The special keywords AND, OR and NOT let you create logical expressions in your searches. When you search, you need to use these terms in ALL CAPS to distinguish them from normal words. For instance, the word And in a search will be interpreted as the word "and," not the special operator AND.
The AND operator says that the search should return content containing both the search terms before and after the AND operator. The OR operator returns content if either one of the terms matches. The NOT operator excludes documents that contain (in the fields searched for) the search term after the NOT. (You can't start a search with the NOT operator.) You can also use these operators with sub-queries enclosed in parentheses to create more complex expressions as shown in the following examples.
"quick brown fox" OR rabbit
- Matches text containing the exact phrase "quick brown fox" or the word rabbit.
quick brown fox
- Matches content containing the words "quick," "brown," and "fox" in any order. Search implicitly assumes the AND operator when an operator is not specified.
(quick brown) AND (fox OR rabbit) AND NOT forest
- Matches content containing both "quick" and "brown" in any order, plus either "fox" or "rabbit," but not containing the word "forest." This example shows how you can use parentheses to group more than one word together as a regular (non-phrase) search and to specify the order of operations.
Note:The NOT operator can only be applied to simple terms, not compound sub-queries, and it cannot be used inside a sub-query.
Special Characters and Words
The following characters and operator words are treated specially in the search syntax (separated by a single space): * ( ) " AND OR NOT
You can't search for these characters and operators, because we use them for special search syntax. If you use them in search text in a way that doesn't make sense, the search engine may ignore them. For example, an odd number of quote characters will be ignored, and multiple asterisks next to each other will be interpreted as a single wildcard.
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