<< Click to Display Table of Contents >> Navigation:  Using PlanWeb > PlanWeb Main Page > Understanding the Main Page > Full Text Search Bar > Writing queries

Currently, the full-text-search will return results where there is a match for all the search terms. Example, if the search terms are sand dam, the results must get a match for sand AND dam.

We don’t have a way to search for sand OR dam at this point (we hope to add this feature soon).

We can’t handle phrases yet. For example, if the search terms are Sand Dam Water Quality, the results will include entries where all of these words occur in the text, no matter the order of the search terms or if they are a single phrase. Quality Sand Water Dam would return the same result as Sand Dam Water Quality.

Tips for choosing search terms

Choosing good search terms is important for finding what you are looking for. For example, searching using only the term food is likely not useful because it will return too many results in most cases. Or searching for words that are often misspelled (e.g. separate) will limit your results to only instances where the spelling you use occurs. Searches work best when you know the words that should show up in the entry. Searching for food cooking might return too many results, searching for food cooking fuel produces a much more manageable list.

For example: Searching for Sand dam related information. Entering the text sand dams will search for entries that contain both the words "sand" and "dams". If entries contain the word "dam" but not "dams" then the entry will not be returned by the search. To ensure results with both “dam” and “dams” get returned, use sand dam*

Numbers are valid search terms and are a good way to limit results. For example, searching for 1975 will return all results with the number "1975". In most cases, this will refer to the year "1975".

Avoid the use of special characters including: "/\,+=-(){}|?<>. Typically, they are filtered from searches, but they mess up the search term highlighting feature. For example, searching for 1975 training will return the same number of results as "1975 training" but the search term highlighting will not work as expected when using the double quotes in the search.