| Sample query | Finds |
| user requirement | user group requirement
user has a requirement |
| Califorrnia (incorrect spelling) | California (correct spelling) |
| communication | communicate, communicating, communi-cation |
| Palo Alto (correct spelling) | Paloalto (incorrect spelling) |
| Be specific | Use words you think will be in only the documents you want. Searching for "Siamese" in a pets discussion usually gives you fewer results than "cats," and they'll be closer to what you want.
Use double quotes to search for an exact phrase
"Cats are choosy eaters" finds that exact phrase. Single quotes do not work. |
| Learn a few basic operators | If the database is full-text indexed, there are certain words and characters called operators that Notes reads as instructions rather than words. You may want to learn some basic operators such as OR, AND, or NOT and use them in searches. |
| ( ) [parentheses] | This determines the order in which Notes processes sections of your query. A part of the query enclosed in parentheses will be processed before parts outside the parentheses.
Example: '(FIELD Projectname CONTAINS top secret OR FIELD Title CONTAINS tuna) AND (Field body CONTAINS cat OR Field revdate > 01/01/2004)' will return documents whose Projectname field contains the words 'top secret' or whose title field contains the word 'tuna'; and either the body field contains the word cat or the revdate field contains a date greater than 01/01/2004. |
| and
AND
& | These find documents containing all the conditions or words linked by AND.
Example: 'cat AND dog AND fish' finds documents containing all three of these words. |
| or
OR
|
, (comma) | These find documents containing either of the conditions or words and returns them ranked by number of appearances in the document.
Example: 'cat OR dog OR fish' finds documents containing at least one of these words.
Note ACCRUE works slightly better than OR when sorting results by relevance. |
| NOT
not
! | These make the query negative.
You can put NOT between words: 'cat AND NOT dog' finds documents containing the word cat, but not if they also contain the word dog.
'(cat OR dog) AND NOT (fish OR frogs)' finds documents containing the word cat or dog, but not if they also contain the word fish or frog.
'(cat AND dog) AND NOT fish' finds documents containing the words cat and dog, but not if they also contain the word fish.
You can put NOT before any field name: 'NOT [Projectname] CONTAINS top secret' finds documents whose Projectname field does not contain the words 'top secret.'
You cannot put NOT after the math symbols =, <, >, <=, or >=; and before a date or number: For example, '[date1] = NOT 12/25/2002' is not an appropriate query. |
| ? | This is a wildcard. It represents any single letter. It does not work with dates or numbers.
Example: '?one' finds documents containing bone, cone, done, gone (and any other four-letter words that end with 'one')
'???ck' finds documents containing stack, clock, stick, truck; rack, rick, rock |
| * | This is a wildcard. It represents any extension of letters. It does not work with dates or numbers.
Example: '*one' finds documents containing bone, cone, clone, crone, done, drone, gone, telephone (and any other words of any length that end with 'one')
Also, '*one*' finds documents containing bone, cone, clone, lonely, phoned, stoned, pardoned |
| TERMWEIGHT
termweight | This gives importance, or "weight," to search words. You can use any value from 0 through 65537 to assign weight.
Example: 'TERMWEIGHT 25 photo or TERMWEIGHT 75 audio or TERMWEIGHT 50 video' finds documents containing at least one of the words. 'Audio' is most important, 'video' is next, and 'photo' is least important. Notes ranks results accordingly. You need an AND or OR between first TERMWEIGHT and subsequent ones. |
| EXACTCASE
exactcase | This tells Notes to search for the exact case of the word following.
Example: 'exactcase Apple' finds documents containing 'Apple,' but not 'APPLE' or 'apple.' |