Operators and Special Characters
You can also use different operators and special characters in your search query to find documents and objects that strictly meet your search criteria. The table below lists the operators and special characters that can be used to broaden or narrow a search.
| Search type | Operator or special character | Description |
|---|---|---|
|
Exact match |
Quotation marks: "phrase" |
Search words inside quotation marks find objects that contain all of the search terms in the given order. Example search: "functional specification" The exact match search operates differently with the different search engines available for M-Files. M-Files Smart Search and dtSearch always find the exact form of the phrase inside the quotation marks. Micro Focus IDOL finds the exact forms, inflected forms, and decompounded forms (for example, "smartphone" also finds "smart" and "phone"). To know which search engine your organization uses, contact your M-Files administrator or try different searches in the vault. To have Micro Focus IDOL operate in the same manner as M-Files Smart Search and dtSearch, your M-Files administrator must disable the search engine's language analyzer. This can be done in the settings of the search index with Advanced Vault Settings. For the new setting to be used, the search index must be rebuild (refer to Rebuilding the dtSearch Full-Text Search Index). For performance reasons, the exact match search for M-Files Smart Search only uses approximately 950 to 1,000 of the first words in a document. |
|
Any single character |
Question mark: appl? |
The ? character matches any single character except a whitespace or underscore character (_) in its position. Example search: appl? matches both "apply" and "apple". Note: This character cannot be used as the first character in a search term.
|
|
Any single digit |
Hash: 201# |
The # character matches any single digit in its position. Example search: 201# matches, for example, "2017" and "2018". Note: This character cannot be used as the first character in a search term.
|
|
Any number of characters |
Asterisk: market* |
The * character matches any number of characters in its position. Example search: market* matches "markets", "marketing", and so on. Note: This character cannot be used as the first character in a search term.
|
|
Fuzzy search |
Vertical bar: que|ry |
Vertical bars can be used for searching for spelling variations of the search term. The number of | characters used indicates how many characters in the search term will be ignored. Characters to the left of the first vertical bar must have an exact match in the search results. Example search: release s||chedule Note: Fuzzy search is disabled by default and must be enabled by the M-Files system administrator. See Enabling Phonic and Fuzzy Searches for
more information.
|
|
Phonic search |
The grave accent mark ( ` ): `query |
You can use the grave accent mark ( ` ) for searching for words that sound like the word in your search query and begins with the same letter. Add the ` character in front of the search word to search for its phonic matches. Example search: `John Doe Note: To use this feature, your search engine must be dtSearch.
Note: Phonic search is disabled by default and must be enabled by the M-Files system administrator. For more information, see Enabling Phonic and Fuzzy Searches.
Note: Phonic searches are inclusive by nature, and therefore they may occasionally produce too
many search results or their search precision may be low.
|
|
Synonym search |
Documents containing synonyms of a word included in your search query may
also be listed in the search results. For example, if you search for announcement,
the search results may also list documents containing words such as notice,
bulletin, publication, or statement, in addition to the word
announcement. Note: Synonym search is disabled by default and must be enabled by the
M-Files system administrator. See Setting Up Synonym Search for more
information. |
|
|
Underscore: 2018_01 |
The _ character matches a whitespace. Consequently, the next character starts a search term and cannot be a wildcard character ?, #, or *. Example search: 2018_01 matches both "2018_01" and "2018 01". |
Boolean operators
Click the search options icon (
) and select Boolean to use the Boolean operators in
your search.
| Search type | Operator | Description |
|---|---|---|
|
All of the search terms must be found |
AND |
The AND operator combines two search terms. Documents found contain both terms. Example search: functional AND specification |
|
One of the search terms must be found |
OR |
The OR operator retrieves all documents which contain at least one of the terms entered. Example search: agenda OR minutes |
|
Exclude a search term |
NOT |
The NOT operator excludes a search term from the search results. It can be used in conjunction with AND, OR or W/N. Example search: agenda AND NOT minutes |
|
Required search term and an optional search term |
AndAny |
The AndAny operator combines required search terms with optional ones. Search terms before the AndAny operator are required and terms appearing after the operator are optional. In other words, search terms after the AndAny operator are considered as matches only if the search terms before the operator are also found in the document. Example search: agenda AndAny minutes |
|
Faceted query |
( ) |
Brackets are used to group search terms together. Example search: (agenda OR minutes) AND market* This search returns all objects which contain the word "agenda" or "minutes" and which also contain a word or words beginning with "market". |
|
Proximity search |
W/N |
The W/N operator retrieves objects that contain two words or phrases within a certain distance of one another. The N value indicates the number of intervening words between the search words or phrases. Example search: agenda W/4 2015 |