Table 7.2. Search Operators
Operators and Variations | Description |
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And AND & | Finds documents that contain all the words or conditions combined with the operator. Example: Man AND Woman |
* (asterisk) | A wildcard that represents any extension of letters, more than one character per asterisk (doesn't work with dates or numbers). Example: *ow, ho*, *ho* |
CONTAINS Contains = (equal sign) | Specifies that the field before the operator must contain the text that follows the operator. Example: [title] = Favorite. Surround your field names with square brackets. |
EXACTCASE Exactcase | Finds documents that contain words where the case matches exactly the example in the Search box. The database's case- sensitive option must have been selected when the full-text index was created. Example: EXACT CASE Notes |
Field FIELD [fieldname] | Finds documents in which the specified field contains the specified value, using the syntax FIELD fieldname CONTAINS value. Example: FIELD LName CONTAINS Dobbs |
NOT Not ! | Makes query negative. Examples: Man AND Woman, Not [LName] CONTAINS Dobbs, FIELD LName CONTAINS NOT Dobbs |
PARAGRAPH Paragraph | Finds documents in which the words around PARAGRAPH are in the same paragraph and then ranks the documents by how close the words are. The data- base's indexing option must be on. Example: desk PARAGRAPH computer |
Or OR | ACCRUE, (comma) | Finds documents that contain either of the conditions or words in combination with the operator. ACCRUE works a little better when sorting results by relevance. Example: Man OR Mouse |
? (question mark) | A wildcard that represents any extension of lettersone question mark per character (doesn't work with dates or numbers). Example: *ow, ho* |
" "(quotes) | Place quotes around and, or, contains, and so on to have those words treated as words and not as operators. You can also surround a series of words or a pharase with quotes to have the search engine search for that exact string. |
SENTENCE Sentence | Finds documents in which the words around SENTENCE are in the same sentence and then ranks the documents by how close the words are. The database's indexing option must be on. Example: desk SENTENCE computer |
TERMWEIGHT Termweight | Gives weight to search words when documents containing the words are found. Use any value between 0 and 65537, with the higher number being most important in ranking. Example: TERMWEIGHT 50 manual OR TERMWEIGHT 75 automatic |
=(equal to) <(less than) >(greater than) <= (less than or equal to) >= (greater than or equal to) | Numeric operators for use in searching for numbers or dates in number or date fields. Example: FIELD CreateDate > 1/1/1999 |