Document Searching Tips

Learn useful tips to help you to find emails and documents in the Information Zone, and from the Documents tab on certain records.

What Gets Searched Against

When you run a document search, the system searches for words in document titles and descriptions. It also searches the content within documents for certain file types, including emails, Microsoft Office documents, text files, and HTML files.

A maximum of 100 documents return in the search results, ordered by the most recent documents first. In Classic View, you can click More Results to display up to 1000 documents.

Related Word Searches

When you search for documents, any words from the same stem word within documents are returned in the results. This is commonly called stemming, and it applies to both single words and phrases.

For example, if you search for the word Conserve, it returns documents that contain the words Conserve, Conserved, Conservation, and so on.

Note: The stem of a word is not based on spelling. Stemming does not work when you conduct a wildcard search.

Exact Phrase Searches

You can search for phrases by wrapping the search text in double quotation marks. Exact phrase matches return documents that include all words in the double quotation marks, and in the exact same order.

For example, if you search for the phrase "Planning Permission", it returns documents that include the exact phrase Planning Permission in the same word order.

Wildcard Searches

You can use wildcard searches to search against document titles by preceding the search text with an asterisk (*). This is useful when you want to search for documents that include a combination of numbers, letters, and punctuation in their titles, such as drawings.

For example, if you search for *-032-, it returns any documents that have -032- in the document title, such as P10-032-0001, P10-032-0002, P10-032-0004, and so on.

You can also use the asterisk symbol at the end of a word to conduct a partial word search.

For example, if you search for test*, it returns any documents that mention test, tests, tester, testing, and so on.

Optional Word Searches

You can search for documents that may or may not mention certain words by using the | symbol.

For example, if you search for Windmill Park |variation, it returns documents that mention Windmill Park, and may or may not mention the word variation.

Excluded Word Searches

You can search for documents that mention certain words, but exclude other words, by using the - symbol.

For example, if you search for Windmill Park -variation, it returns documents that mention Windmill Park, but excludes any documents that also mention the word variation.

Fuzzy Searches

You can search for terms that closely match a search term in a document by using the tilde ~ symbol at the end of a word. This feature is useful if you want to compensate for typos and misspelled terms.

For example, if you want to search for documents that contain slight variations to the term Building, you would search for Building~. This returns all documents that mention Building, Biulding, Builder, Build, and so on.

If you search for Foam~, all documents that mention Foam, Roam, and so on, are returned in the results.

Proximity Searches

You can search for documents that contain terms that are close to each other by using the tilde ~ symbol at the end of a phrase, followed by the number of words that create the proximity boundary.

For example, if you search for "construction project"~5, all documents that mention the words construction and project within 5 words of each other are returned in the results.

Field Searches

You can search against document titles, details, content, and ID by using the : symbol.

For example, to search for documents that mention Windmill Park in the title, you search for title:"Windmill Park".

To search for documents that mention Windmill Park in the document details, you search for keywords:"Windmill Park".

To search for documents that mention Windmill Park in the contents of the document, you search for content:"Windmill Park".

To search for documents that mention Windmill Park in the title, and Document Approval in the contents, you search for title:"Windmill Park" content:"Document Approval".

To search for the document with document ID 1256, you search for ID:1256.