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Full-Text Search Syntax

One of the benefits of using advanced search to perform text searches is performing more complex text searches, such as searching for multiple words or phrases. All advanced search types can be customized with advanced search operators and wildcards.

To perform a simple text search, type the word you want to search for. To search for the word pruning, type the following:

To search for a phrase, enclose it in quotes. To search for the phrase “pruning shears” type the following:

You can make searches more powerful by combining words or phrases with operators. To find all documents that pertain to "pruning" and contain the word "maple" or "cherry," you would use one of the following:

In the search criteria specified above, the pipe "|" represents "OR" and the ampersand "&" represents "AND." In the above example, the order in which search criteria are listed does not matter, however, in other cases, the order can make a huge difference. If you remove the parentheses from the above example, you end up with the following:

This would find all documents containing the words "pruning" and "maple." It would also find all documents that contain the word "cherry."

This would find all documents containing the word "maple." It would also find all documents that contain the words "cherry" and "pruning."

Proximity searches can also be performed using advanced search syntax. To specify a proximity search, separate two phrases with a caret (^) followed by the maximum number of words that can come between the two phrases. If you were only interested in documents where the word "pruning" occurs within 15 words of either the word "maple" or "cherry," you would use one of the following: