Everything else about it works identically to the w/# search. The term to the left of the pre/# must come before (or precede) the term on the right. “there were twelve soldiers here” would also cause a hit, because the within search doesn’t specify an order of words.Īlternatively, when using 'pre/#', the order of words does matter.But, “here are twelve soldiers, sitting on the dock there” would not return results because too many words exist between the two phrases. Therefore, a document that has “here are twelve soldiers, there on the dock” would be a hit.“here” w/5 “there” would require the two terms to be within five words of each other.In the search, it will be written as ‘w/#’ with a number that represents the amount of words allowed between the two terms. These are a little like an ‘AND’ search, but instead of requiring both terms to simply exist within a document, it needs the terms to be close to one another in order to return a successful hit.įirst, we’ll look at the within search. You could include or remove them, and it will have no effect on the results. In a search like “here” AND (“there” AND “anywhere”), the parentheses serve no purpose. The same thing applies to text searching. In a formula like 5+(6-3)+2, the parenthesis do not matter you could remove them and the result would be identical. Just like with math, there are times where the parentheses won’t matter at all. The search in the second example will always require “here”, but it must also have one of “there” or “anywhere”. Or, if “anywhere” wasn’t in the document, it would require both “here” and “there” to be a hit. Like we discussed in the previous example, the search would hit if only “anywhere”, and not “here” or “there”, was in the document. Incorporating parentheses into your search queries works in the exact same way.ĭrawing from the previous example, here is how you can cause different results to your search by incorporating parentheses: Just as with regular mathematical equations, parentheses change the order of operations. When programs carry out search results, they essentially practice a branch of math: Boolean Algebra. Think back to when you first learned about BEDMAS in the seventh grade. Here’s where things get a bit more complicated. To achieve this, you need to use parentheses. Often, what the searcher really wants is for the ‘OR’ to only apply to the last 2 terms. I’ve seen lots of examples similar to the bottom point, sometimes with a lot more ‘AND’s on the left side. In the second example, “anywhere” on its own would cause a document to hit, but “there” would also require “here” to exist in the document for it to be a hit. In the first example, only one of the terms needs to exist in a document for it to be a hit. I’ve seen many searches that were written so a single term would cause a hit, despite that not being the intention of the searcher. Naturally, this can sometimes cause confusion. If the search on the left of the ‘OR’ isn’t true, but the contents on the right side are, then it will hit on the document. Think of this connector as if you’re asking the search engine to, “Find me either or one of these two terms.” If the term/phrase to the left of the ‘OR’ is true, then the search will hit on the document. Unlike ‘AND’, which combines multiple searches and requires both terms to be present, ‘OR’ separates the searches into two. The second most commonly used connector to use is ‘OR’. When including 'AND', both “here” and “there” must exist for a document to be considered a hit. You can add it between any two terms, and the search will require both queries to appear in its results. ‘AND’ is probably the most commonly used connector. These principles apply to all programs including Relativity, Eclipse, eCapture and Nuix. Today, I’m taking it a step further and sharing how connectors and wildcards can be used in text searches to get optimal results for your search queries. When we first launched our Tuesday Tip series, I wrote the introductory post Boolean Searches 101: How to Locate the Documents You Actually Need.
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