Advanced Full-Text Search

There are a number of more advanced options available for full-text search. You can use the boolean operators AND, OR and NOT, as well as the NEAR operator. Search expressions can be nested using brackets to create quite complex searches. Wildcard expressions are also available.

To create an advanced full-text search:

  1. Click the Search tab, and then type the words or phrases you want to find.
  2. Click List Topics, select the topic you want, and then click Display.
  3. To sort the topic list, click the Title, Location, or Rank column heading.

You can search for words or phrases and use wildcard expressions. Wildcard expressions allow you to search for one or more characters using a question mark or asterisk. The table below describes the results of these different kinds of searches.

Search for

Example

Results

A single word

select

Topics that contain the word "select".

You will also find its grammatical variations, such as "selector" and "selection".

A phrase

"new operator"
or
new operator

Topics that contain the literal phrase "new operator" and all its grammatical variations.

Without the quotation marks, the query is equivalent to specifying "new AND operator", which will find topics containing both of the individual words, instead of the phrase.

Wildcard expressions

esc*
or
80?86

Topics that contain the terms "ESC", "escape", "escalation", and so on. The asterisk cannot be the only character in the term.

Topics that contain the terms "80186", "80286", "80386", and so on. The question mark cannot be the only character in the term.

Select the Match Similar Words check box to include minor grammatical variations for the phrase you search.

The AND, OR, NOT, and NEAR operators enable you to precisely define your search by creating a relationship between search terms. The following table shows how you can use each of these operators. If no operator is specified, AND is used. For example, the query "spacing border printing" is equivalent to "spacing AND border AND printing."

Search for

Example

Results

Both terms in the same topic

dib AND palette

Topics containing both the words "dib" and "palette".

Either term in a topic

raster OR vector

Topics containing either the word "raster" or the word "vector" or both.

The first term without the second term

ole NOT dde

Topics containing the word "OLE" but not the word "DDE".

Both terms in the same topic, close together

user NEAR kernel

Topics containing the word "user" within eight words of the word "kernel".
Note

The |, &, and ! characters do not work as boolean operators. You must use OR, AND, and NOT.

Nested expressions allow you to create complex searches for information. For example:

"control AND ((active OR dde) NEAR window)"

finds topics containing the word "control" along with the words "active" and "window" close together, or containing "control" along with the words "dde" and "window" close together.

The basic rules for searching help topics using nested expressions are as follows:

  • You can use brackets to nest expressions within a query. The expressions in brackets are evaluated before the rest of the query.
  • If a query does not contain a nested expression, it is evaluated from left to right. For example: "Control NOT active OR dde" finds topics containing the word "control" without the word "active," or topics containing the word "dde." On the other hand, "control NOT (active OR dde)" finds topics containing the word "control" without either of the words "active" or "dde."
  • You cannot nest expressions more than five levels deep.

Search Help Tips (includes full-text search for the following: topic titles, similar terms or previous search results)