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Searching for Documentation and Demos in the Help Browser

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Simple Search Getting Better Search Results Advanced Search Techniques Searching Within a Page

Simple Search

For the key steps to perform a Help browser search, see Searching for Documentation and Demos in the MATLAB Getting Started Guide.

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Getting Better Search Results

• Too Many Results?

• Too Few Results?

• Understanding Search Rules

Too Many Results?

To reduce the number of results, try:

• Searching in Specified Products

• Adding words in the search field

• Finding an Exact Phrase

• Excluding Pages Containing Specified Words — Boolean NOT

Too Few Results?

To increase the number of results, try:

• Searching in more products. See Searching in Specified Products.

• Searching for Part of a Word — Using Wildcards

• Looking in bug reports, solutions, and technical notes at the MathWorks Web site. Click Search Online Support at the bottom of Search Results pane.

See also Additional Resources.

Understanding Search Rules

If you do not obtain the results you want, it could be because of how search works:

• Search ignores insignificant words, such as a, an, the, and of, unless they are part of an exact phrase.

• Search is not case sensitive.

• Search finds letters and digits, but not symbols. See Searching for Special Characters and Symbols.

• Search looks in the following places:

  • Documentation — the text and code you see on the page in the Help browser

  • M-file and Model demos — comments and code

  • M-GUI demos — comments in the M-file help

  • Video demos — the title

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Advanced Search Techniques

• Searching for Part of a Word — Using Wildcards

• Finding an Exact Phrase

• Searching in Specified Products

• Finding Any of the Words — Boolean OR

• Excluding Pages Containing Specified Words — Boolean NOT

• Using Multiple BOOLEAN Operators

• Searching for Special Characters and Symbols

Searching for Part of a Word — Using Wildcards

To find a partial match, use the wildcard character (*) in place of characters in the search words. Search accepts more than one wildcard character.

For example:

• Find plot, plots, or plotting:

  plot*

• Find plot tools or plotting tool:

  plot* tool*

Requirements for Using Wildcards.  

• Use two or more characters with a wildcard. For example, p* fails.

• Do not use wildcards within an exact phrase. For example, "plot* tool" fails.

• Do not begin a search word with a wildcard character. For example, *tool fails.

Finding an Exact Phrase

To reduce the number of irrelevant results, specify an exact phrase by enclosing the words in quotation marks. Search accepts more than one exact phrase.

For example:

• Find pages that contain plot tools, in that sequence, with no words between them:

  "plot tools"

• Find pages that contain both "plot tools" and "figure palette":

  "plot tools" "figure palette"

Searching in Specified Products

By default, the Help browser search feature looks in the documentation and demos for all installed products.

To specify which products to search, use the product filter. See Filter by Product — Specifying Products Used in the Help Browser.

After performing a search, to organize results by product, click the Product column header.

To search for documentation in products that are not installed, use the documentation on the MathWorks Web site. See Documentation for Products That Are Not Installed.

Finding Any of the Words — Boolean OR

For more search results, look for pages that contain any of the search words by including OR between words:

• Include a space before and after OR

• Use all capital letters for OR.

For example, find pages that contain plot and pages that contain graph:

plot OR graph

Excluding Pages Containing Specified Words — Boolean NOT

To find pages that contain specified search words, but do not contain other specified words, include NOT before the words to exclude. Using NOT reduces irrelevant search results.

For example, find pages that contain "plot tools", but do not contain "time series":

"plot tools" NOT "time series"

Using Multiple BOOLEAN Operators

Search evaluates NOT operators first, OR operators second, and AND operators last.

By default, search looks for pages that contain all the search words, which is called a Boolean AND. If there is not an OR or NOT before a word, search assumes that there is an AND before it.

When you construct a search with multiple operators, you can include AND before a word to help you understand the search.

For example, find pages that contain either plotting tool or plot tools and contain workspace, but do not contain time series:

"plotting tool" OR "plot tools" NOT "time series" AND workspace

Searching for Special Characters and Symbols

To find a symbol or special character, look for the word instead of the symbol or character.

For example, look for plus instead of +.

Other ways to find information about special characters and symbols:

• Operators and Special Characters category in MATLAB Function Reference

• Search in the PDF documentation, which supports searching for special characters and symbols. For details, see Accessing and Printing PDF Documentation.

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Searching Within a Page

Using Highlighted Search Words

After performing a Help browser search, when you view a page from the results, search words on the page appear with highlights.

Any of the following clears the highlighting:

• Right-click on the page and select Refresh.

• Click a link on the page.

• Go to another location using the navigation bar.

To restore the highlights after clearing them, go to a different page. Then select the search result again.

Using Find in Page

Find search words or any word on a page by selecting Edit > Find and using the Find dialog box. To go to the next instance on the page, use the keyboard shortcut, F3. Use Shift+F3 to go to the previous instance. The find in page feature looks for partial words. For example, plot finds plot and plotting.

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Getting Help for Functions and Blocks

Using Demos and Code Examples

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