Full Text Search
Help on searching a database
Document overview (quick jump table):
Searching with wildcards
You can substitute wildcard characters for other characters when you search for text. Use a
- ? (question mark) for a single character, and an
- * (asterisk) for multiple characters.
Wildcard characters work only in fields that contain text; they do not work in fields that contain dates or numbers.
Examples: Using wildcards
Typing this text... | Finds documents that include these words... |
?one | bone, cone, done, gone (and any other four-letter words that end with "one") |
*one | bone, cone, clone, crone, done, drone, gone, telephone (and any other words of any length that end with "one") |
Examples: find documents created by certain authors
Suppose you want to find documents created by certain authors.
Davi? | Peg Davis, David Levinson, Yvonne David |
Lev* | Steven Levine, David Levinson |
Dav* | Peg Davis, David Levinson, Mary Davidson, Yvonne David |
Simple Operators: AND, OR, NOT, ACCRUE and @
Operator... | Finds documents... |
NOT | not | ! | that do not contain the condition or word following NOT |
AND | and | & | that contain both the conditions or words separated by AND |
OR | or | | | that contain either of the conditions or words separated by OR |
ACCRUE | accrue | , | that are same documents as OR, but increases the relevance ranking of a document when the document contains more than one matching conditon or word |
@ | which contain both of the words that are separated by @, as long as the words are next to each other in the documents. (Do not place spaces between @ and either word.) |
Examples: Using AND, OR, NOT, ACCRUE and @
Typing this text... | Finds documents that contain... |
cat & dog & fish | all three of these words |
cat | dog | fish | at least one of these words |
cat, dog, fish | at least one of these words. Notes/Domino gives higher relevance to documents that contain two or three of these words |
dog@fish | dog and fish next to each other |
Among the things you can do when you edit a formula in the search form are change AND to OR or OR to AND. Add NOT before any word or token to find all documents that do not contain the specified information.
Using parenthesis
Use parentheses around various portions of the formula to change the order in which Notes/Domino calculates the portions of the formula. Notes performs operations between parentheses before those outside of parentheses.
Examples: Using parenthesis
Typing this text... | Finds documents that contain... |
(dog AND cat) OR fish | dog and cat; fish |
dog AND (cat OR fish) | dog and cat; dog and fish |
dog AND NOT (cat OR fish) | dog, as long as they don't also contain cat or fish |
Field operator
Use the field operator to restrict your search to a specified field.
Syntax: Field Operator
The syntax is
FIELD field-name operator
where operator is
contains
for text and rich text fields, and is one of the following for number and date fields:
=, >, >=, <, =
Proximity operators: searching for words that are close to each other
Use the Proximity operators to find words that are close to each other. Documents in which the search text has a high relevance ranking appear at the top of the list of search results (when you sort the results by relevance).
Operator... | Description |
near | The closer the words are to each other, the higher their relevance ranking when Notes/Domino displays the search results. |
sentence | Same as the near operator, but the words must be in the same sentence. |
paragraph | Same as the near operator, but the words must be in the same paragraph. |
Syntax: Proximity operator
To use the Proximity operator, type your search text as follows
word1 near word2
word1 sentence word2
word1 paragraph word2
Examples: Proximity operator
Typing this text... | Finds documents... |
cat near mouse | that contain both "cat" and "mouse." Notes gives a higher relevance ranking to documents in which these two words are closer to each other. |
cat sentence mouse | in which "cat" and "mouse" are in the same sentence, and gives a higher relevance ranking to documents in which these two words are closer to each other. |
cat paragraph mouse | Finds documents in which "cat" and "mouse" are in the same paragraph, and gives a higher relevance ranking to documents in which these two words are closer to each other. |
Termweight Operator: Changing the relevance ranking of certain search words
Use the Termweight operator to change the relevance ranking of words you typed directly into the search form.
If your database has a full text index, you can use the Termweight operator to change the relevance ranking of search words, thus increasing or decreasing their importance in the search. Documents in which the search text is most important appear at the top of the list of search results (when you sort the results by relevance).
Syntax: Using the Termweight Operator
To use the Termweight operator, type your search text as follows:
termweight 80 word1 or termweight 20 word2
where the numbers following "termweight" can be any integer from 0 - 100.
Examples: Termweight Operator
Typing this text... | Finds documents that contain... |
termweight 70 video or termweight 30 audio | "video" or "audio" or both. Gives a much higher relevance to "video" than to "audio." |
termweight 25 photo or termweight 75 audio or termweight 50 video | any of the words "photo," "audio," or "video." Gives the highest relevance to "audio," the next highest relevance to "video," and the least relevance to "photo." |
Exactcase Operator: Making a search case-sensitive
Use the Exactcase operator to find words capitalized exactly the way you typed them in the search form.
If someone created a case-sensitive full text index, you can use the Exactcase operator to limit your search to words that use the same case that you type in your search text.
Syntax: Exactcase Operator
To use the Exactcase operator, type your search text as follows:
exactcase (search text)
If search text is only one word, you don't need to enclose it in parentheses.
Examples: Exactcase Operator
For example,
exactcase Apple
finds all instances of the word Apple, but does not find the words APPLE or apple.
Typing this text... | Finds documents that contain... |
exactcase (Apple and IBM) | "Apple" and "IBM" |
exactcase Apple and exactcase IBM | "Apple" and "IBM" (Same as above) |
exactcase Apple and IBM | "Apple" and any case of IBM, such as Ibm, iBm, ibM, IBm, IBM, etc. |
Understanding: Sorting search results
Depending on the display option you choose, Notes/Domino displays search results in the following manner:
Sort by Relevance
Notes displays the search results according to the importance of the search text in each document. Documents in which the search text is most important appear at the top of the list. To determine the relative importance of each document, Notes compares the number of times the search text appears in the document and the size of the document.
Note: You can use the Termweight and Proximity operators to increase and decrease the relevance ranking of search text.
Sort by Newest First
Notes places the most recently created or modified documents at the top of the list.
Sort by Oldest First
Notes places the last documents created or modified at the top of the list.
Note:
You will only see results based on the view in which you clicked on the search link. Some views in the database limit the results by only displaying a subset of all documents in a database.
Try initiating the search by starting from another view if you haven't found what you are looking for.