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Search Techniques Survival Guide
This is a posting to help you experience more success when it comes to trying to search for information in this discussion group. Many times it appears that successful searching is more an art than a science. Hopefully this will help you find what you are looking for with a minimum amount of hassles.
Search Before Asking!!!
If there's any single thing you can do to make your experience on this discussion board more enjoyable, it's learning how to search for previous posts that might shed light on your question before you ask it. In many, many cases, the problem or question you have has been asked (and hopefully answered) before. By learning how to search for that answer before posting the question, you can tap into the accumulated group wisdom and perhaps find the answer long before someone will get back to you.
To search on this database, click on the Search link at the top of each view. You will be shown a page with a Search Bar. You type in the words you are searching for in the Search Bar, and then click on the Search button. After hopefully a very short period of time, you will be returned a list of postings that matched your search criteria. Start clicking on the post titles that look promising, and you'll hopefully find your answer. Make sure you also follow the threads at the end of each post to get the context of what has been said.
But wait... There's more! If you are REALLY serious about searching for your answers, you need to go to the Martin Scott Consulting site and use the Domino SuperSearch. It takes your search words and launches separate searches on over 30 different Notes sites.
A word of wisdom... If you enter too many words in the search bar, you may narrow down your search so far that you miss what you were looking for. Searching for "Y2K Lotus Domino compliancy" will not return as much information as searching for "Y2K". It's best to start with very general terms, and then make it more specific if you get too much information back. Also remember, just because you are looking for "unique number" doesn't mean that everyone calls it that. You may need to try different words, like "sequential number".
Basic keywords to use in the Search Bar...
AND or & - documents that contain both the conditions or words. Example: cat AND dog AND fish - returns documents containing all three of these words.
OR or | - documents that contain either of the conditions or words. Example: cat OR dog OR fish - returns documents containing at least one of these words.
NOT or ! - documents that do not contain the condition or word following NOT.
Example: dog AND NOT cat - documents that contain the word "dog", as long as they don't also contain the word "cat".
ACCRUE or , (comma) - finds the same documents as OR, but increases the relevance ranking of a document when the document contains more than one matching conditon or word.
Example: cat,dog,fish - returns documents containing at least one of these words. Notes gives higher relevance to documents that contain two or three of these words.
@ - returns documents 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.
Example: dog@fish - returns documents with "dog" and "fish" next to each other.
Parenthese ( ) - Use parentheses around various portions of the formula to change the order in which Notes calculates the portions of the formula. Notes performs operations between parentheses before those outside of parentheses.
Example: dog AND NOT (cat OR fish) - returns documents with "dog", as long as they don't also contain "cat" or "fish".
Advanced keywords to use in the Search Bar (that may or may not work...)
The following tips may or may not work, as they assume certain indexing options on the Notes database you are searching. I present them for your information, and wish you success! Keep in mind however... The keywords listed in the Basic section will take you about 95% of the places you need to go!
Searching for words that are close to each other
If the "Word, Sentence, and Paragraph" as Index Breaks option was selected when the full text index was created, you can use the Proximity operators to increase the relevance ranking of 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, which is the default). The table below describes the three Proximity operators:
near - The closer the words are to each other, the higher their relevance ranking when Notes displays the search results.
Example: cat near mouse - Finds documents that contain both "cat" and "mouse." Notes gives a higher relevance ranking to documents in which these two words are closer to each other.
sentence - Same as the "near" operator, but the words must be in the same sentence.
Example: cat sentence mouse - Finds documents 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.
paragraph - Same as the "near" operator, but the words must be in the same paragraph.
Example: 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.
Changing the relevance ranking of certain search words
If the 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). 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 of using the Termweight operator:
termweight 70 video or termweight 30 audio - Finds documents that contain "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 - Finds documents that contain 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."
Making a search case-sensitive
If the database has 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. 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 of using the Exactcase operator:
exactcase (Apple and IBM) - Finds documents that contain "Apple" and "IBM" in that exact case
exactcase Apple and exactcase IBM - Finds documents that contain "Apple" and "IBM" in that exact case (Same as above)
exactcase Apple and IBM - Finds documents that contain "Apple" and any case of IBM, such as Ibm, iBm, ibM, IBm, IBM, etc.
Miscellaneous Tips...
- Only know part of the word you are searching on? Use an asterisk to find any partial matches, like: Domi*
- If you are searching on a Notes/Domino discussion-style web site, you might find a bug involving the number of responses for a given subject. In the list of matches, you may see that a main document that says it has 3 responses. You open that document, and find there are no responses for it. No, it's not you. No, they're not hidden. It's just a bug. There really aren't any responses.
- Enclose field names in brackets, like: [Author] contains Darrah
- Enclose reserved words in quotes, like: "field" and delete
- If you copy an error message out of the box and paste it into the Search field and put quotes around it, since it may contain a "not", you can maybe find the exact error message in the DB, since many people paste it into their post. For example: "Collection item not found"
- If you'd like to be able to find all the items you've submitted, responded to, and the associated threads, you can use the following URL format:
http://www.MorrisTechCenter.com/forum.nsf/By+Topic?SearchView&Query=Kolaco&SearchMax=50&SearchOrder=3
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