| www.chignecto.net/cwa/newsships.nsf/help/SearchHelp?OpenDocument |
Searching can be a bit of an art, and it may take more than one try to get the results you want. Because of the complexities of sifting through so much information for something very specific, you may not get what you're looking for on the first try, though it is there.
Try starting with a simple search on one word
Let's say you want to find documents about cats, with information on their relationship with dogs, their hunting mice and eating fish, and you're pretty sure there are documents out there. Try searching on just "cats" first. If there are too many returns, try adding "dog," "mice," and "fish," separated by the operator AND. This finds documents with all those words in it.
Be specific
Use words you think are only in the documents you want. Searching for "Siamese" gives you fewer results than "cats," and they'll be closer to what you want.
Use quotes to search for an exact phrase
"Cats are choosy eaters" finds that exact phrase. Also, putting single spaces between words returns the text in that exact order.
Select "Use Word Variants" and "Fuzzy search"
These are selections available when you open the "More" section of the search bar. They widen your search, making it more comprehensive. Once these are activated, you can try using base words, or parts of words - "pair" to find "pairing" or "pairs"; "ray" to find "gray," "stray," or "bray."
Use different words with the same meaning
Let's say you're looking for documents about cats. Try "cats OR felines OR kittens." The OR operator finds documents containing any of these.
Keep an eye on the number of results you get back
If you have too many or too few results, try reformulating your search.
If there are too many results, try using AND. If there are too few results, try OR.
cats OR dogs Returns documents with one or the other (returns more results)
cats AND dogs Returns documents with both (returns fewer results)
To use options to refine a search
You have two options when searching a view that you can turn on or off like switches. "Use word variants" tells the Domino server to find a word allowing for a certain amount of variation from the root word. "Fuzzy search" tells the Domino server to allow for some misspelling.
Use Word Variants
This option finds words with the base word + certain prefixes and suffixes. For example, a search for "swim" will also find "swims," "swimming," "swimmer," and even "swimmed." It will not find the variation "swam," however, because the base word has changed, or "swimmet," or "swimsed" because the suffixes are not acceptable with that word.
Fuzzy search
This option finds documents which have matches similar to your search.
| 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) |