Site Search

Searches produce a list of files that contain the word or phrase no matter where they appear in the text.

This list gives the rules for formulating queries:

• Consecutive words are treated as a phrase; they must appear in the same order within a matching document.
• Queries are case-insensitive, so you can type your query in uppercase or lowercase.
• You can search for any word except for those in the exception list (for English, this includes a, an, and, as, and other common words), which are ignored during a search.
• Words in the exception list are treated as placeholders in phrase and proximity queries. For example, if you searched for "Word for Windows", the results could give you "Word for Windows" and "Word and Windows", because "for" is a noise word and appears in the exception list.
• Punctuation marks such as the period (.), colon (:), semicolon (;), and comma (,) are ignored during a search.
• To use specially treated characters such as &, |, ^, #, @, $, (, ), in a query, enclose your query in quotation marks (").
• To search for a word or phrase containing quotation marks, enclose the entire phrase in quotation marks and then double the quotation marks around the word or words you want to surround with quotes. For example, "World-Wide Web or ""Web""" searches for "World-Wide Web" OR "Web".
• You can insert Boolean operators (AND, OR, and NOT) and the proximity operator (NEAR) to specify additional search information.
• The wildcard character (*) can match words with a given prefix. The query "esc*" matches the terms "ESC", "escape", and so on.
• Free-text queries can be specified without regard to query syntax.

Wildcards
Wildcard operators help you find pages containing words similar to a given word.

To Search For	Search Example	Results
Words with the same prefix	comput*	Pages with words that have the prefix "comput", such as "computer", "computing", and so on
Words based on the same stem word	fly**	Pages with words based on the same stem as "fly" such as "flying", "flown", "flew", and so on

Free-Text Queries
The query engine finds pages that best match the words and phrases in a free-text query. This is done by automatically finding pages that match the meaning, not the exact wording, of the query. Boolean, proximity, and wildcard operators are ignored within a free-text query. Free-text queries are prefixed with $contents.

To Search For	Search Example	Results
Files that match free-text	$contents how do I print in Microsoft Excel?	Pages that mention printing and Microsoft Excel.