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At its simplest, a query can be just a word or a
phrase. But with the tips on this page, you can expand the focus
of your query to give you more complete results.
These tips will get you started with the
basic query language.
Look for words with the same prefix. For
example, in your search field type key*
to find key, keying, keyhole, keyboard,
and so on.
Search for all forms of a word. For
example, in the search field type sink**
to find sink, sinking, sank,
and sunk.
Search with the keyword NEAR, rather
than AND, for words close to each other.
For example, both of these queries, system and
manager and system near manager,
look for the words system and manager
on the same page. But with NEAR, the
returned pages are ranked in order of proximity: The
closer together the words are, the higher the rank of
that page.
Refine your queries with the AND
NOT keywords to exclude certain text from your
search. For example, if you want to find all instances of
surfing but not surfing the Net, write
the following query:
surfing AND NOT the Net
- Add the OR keyword to find all instances
of either one word or another, for example:
Abbott
OR Costello
This query finds all pages that mention Abbott or
Costello or both.
Put quotation marks around keywords if
you want to take them literally. For instance, if you
type the following query:
"system near manager"
Will literally look for the complete phrase system
near manager. But if you type the same query without
the quotation marks:
system near manager
Searches all documents for the words system
and manager.
This list gives the rules for formulating queries:
Multiple consecutive words are treated as
a phrase; they must appear in the same order within a
matching document.
Queries are case-insensitive, so you can
type your query in uppercase or lowercase.
You can search for any word except for
those in the exception list (for English, this includes a,
an, and, as, and other common
words), which are ignored during a search.
Words in the exception list are treated
as placeholders in phrase and proximity queries. For
example, if you searched for "Word for
Windows", the results could give you "Word for
Windows" and "Word and Windows", because for
is a noise word and appears in the exception list.
Punctuation marks such as the period (.),
colon (:), semicolon (;), and comma (,) are ignored
during a search.
To use specially treated characters such
as &, |, ^, #, @, $, (, ), in a query, enclose your
query in quotation marks (").
To search for a word or phrase containing
quotation marks, enclose the entire phrase in quotation
marks and then double the quotation marks around the word
or words you want to surround with quotes. For example, "World-Wide
Web or ""Web""" searches
for World-Wide Web or "Web".
You can use Boolean operators (AND,
OR, and NOT) and the
proximity operator (NEAR) to specify
additional search information.
The wildcard character (*) can match
words with a given prefix. The query esc*
matches the terms "ESC," "escape,"
and so on.
Free-text queries can be specified
without regard to query syntax.
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