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Documentation Search Tips

Simple Searches

To search documentation and demos for keywords, enter one or more keywords in the search field in the Help browser. All words must exist on a page for it to qualify as a search result. To search for an exact phrase, enclose it in double quotation marks, for example, "help report".

When viewing a page from the Help browser search results, scroll through the page to view the search words, which appear with highlights. The highlighting clears when you go to another section by clicking a link or using the navigation bar.

To clear the highlights while viewing the page, right-click on the page and select Refresh. To restore the highlights after clearing them, go to a different page. Then, select the search result again.

Search looks in the following places:

Search Syntax

Search for an Exact Phrase

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

For example:

Search for Part of a Word — Wildcards

The Help browser searches for each entire search word you specify. For example, if you search for plo, you are unlikely to find pages containing plot. To search for part of a word in the Help browser, use the wildcard character (*) in place of characters in a search word. Search accepts more than one wildcard character.

For example:

When you use wildcards, the Help browser normally returns more results than it does without wildcards. Add search terms or preface a term with the Boolean operator NOT to limit results.

Restrictions When Using Wildcards.  

Find Any of the Words — Boolean OR

For more search results in the Help browser, look for sections that contain any of the search words by including OR between words:

For example, find sections that contain plot or graph:

plot OR graph

Exclude Specified Words — Boolean NOT

To find sections 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 in the Help browser.

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

"plot tools" NOT "time series"

Multiple Boolean Operators

The Help browser 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 no Boolean operator before a word, search assumes that there is an AND before it.

When you construct a search with multiple operators, including AND before a word helps 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

Search for Special Characters and Symbols

To find a symbol or special character using the Help browser, 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 are:

Search interprets each asterisk (*) in a search term as a wildcard character.

  


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