Use these guidelines to help create effective searches.
- Single term
- Single-term searches look for all search results that match the search text.
For example, a search entry of doc only returns
search results of "doc".
- Multiple terms
- Multiple-term searches look for all search results that match any of the
words in the search text. For example, a search entry of document
plan returns search results of "document", "test plan", and
"document plan".
- Phrase
- A group of words surrounded by double quotes, such as "product
requirements", returns only search results containing the
entire phrase.
- Boolean operators
- Terms and phrases can be combined with boolean operators for more complex
searches:
- OR between two terms returns search results
containing either of the terms. This is the default operator used if
no other operator is specified.
- AND between two terms returns only search
results containing both of the terms.
- The + operator before a term makes the term
required. Only search results containing the terms are
returned.
- The - or NOT operator
before a term returns only search results that do not contain the
term.
- The NEAR operator between two terms looks for
the two terms close to each other.
- Grouping
- You can group boolean searches using parentheses. For example,
(doc OR test) AND "plan" returns search results
containing "doc plan" and "test plan".
- Wildcard searches
- To look for search results with a single character replaced, use the
? symbol. For example, to look for search results
with "text" or "test", enter "te?t". You can use
wildcard symbols in the middle or at the end of a search, but not as the
first character of a search.
- Fuzzy searches
- To look for search results with spelling similar to the search term entered,
use the ~ symbol as the last character of the search. For example, to look
for search results with spelling similar to "roam", enter "roam~". This
returns search results such as "foam" and "roams".
- Special characters
- If you have any of the following special characters in your search text, you
must escape them by enclosing the entire phrase in double quotes.
+ - & || ! ( ) { } [ ] ^ " ~ * ? : \
For example, to look for search results containing the hyphenated term
product-development, enter
"product-development".
- Excluded words
- The following words are considered stop words and are not searchable on
their own: a, an, and, are, as, at, be, but, by, for, if, in,
into, is, it, no, not, of, on, or, s, such, t, that, the, their, then,
there, these, they, this, to, was, will, with
