The help search in the information center is a full-text
search that supports exact phrases, word stems (in English and German),
wildcard characters, and Boolean operators. You can control whether
search results are highlighted and how they are displayed in the
Search
Results list.
About this task
Note: Search strings are not case-sensitive.
The search results are the same for open, Open, OPEN,
and OpEn.
Procedure
- In the information center Search field,
enter a term and click Go.
The Search Results tab
opens and displays the results for the search, which are sorted by
relevance.
- Optional: In the Search Results tab,
you can customize the display of your results:
- To hide or show the result descriptions, click the
Show Result Descriptions icon.
- To sort the results by their content type instead of relevance,
click the
Show Result Categories icon.
Sorting options vary by product.
- Click a search result to open the corresponding topic. The help topic opens and the search terms you entered
are highlighted. To add or remove term highlighting, click the
Highlight Search Terms icon.
- To return to the Contents view, click
the
Contents tab.
What to do next
If your initial search produces too many or too few hits
to find what you are looking for, refine your search by using these
techniques:
- If you are confident that the information for which you are searching
is in a particular branch of the navigation tree, select the parent
topic for the section, click Search Topics
and select Search this
topic and all subtopics.
- Use a longer, more specific phrase to make more relevant topics
rank higher in the results list.
- Use a wildcard character:
- Asterisk (*): For multiple unknown or variable
characters in the term. For example, the search term par* returns partly, participate, partial,
and other words that begin with par.
- Question mark (?): For a single unknown,
variable character, or zero character in the term. For example, the
search term par? returns part and park,
but not partial or partly.
- Enclose a phrase in quotation marks ("") to find only those
topics that contain that exact phrase. The case does not affect the
search results even when the phrase is enclosed in quotation marks.
English
and German only: When you enclose a term in quotation marks, word-stem
results are not included. For example, without quotation marks, the
search term challenge includes results for challenging and challenged.
- Use a Boolean operator:
- AND: Narrows the search to include topics
that contain both terms. For example, if you enterdatabase
AND "log file", the search results include topics that contain
both the term database and the phrase log file.
- OR: Widens the search to include topics
that contain either one term or another. For example, if you enter database
OR "log file" , the search results include topics that contain
either database or log file.
- NOT: Searches for topics that do not contain
a term or phrase. For example, if you enter database NOT "log
file", the search results include topics that contain database,
but do not contain log file.
- OR...NOT: Searches for topics that contain
one of two terms, but do not contain another term. For example, if
you enter database OR "data base" NOT "log file",
the search results include topics that contain either database or data
base, but do not contain log file.