Options

There are four search options:

Search Method radio button The methods used by the Search feature are AND and OR. The default is AND.

AND displays results that match all the search terms. Use OR to give results that match any of the search terms.

Match Case box Case is not considered by default, so this option is disabled. Enable Match Case when you are looking for a capitalized or non-capitalized word.

Highlight box This feature highlights your search terms in the topic. Enabled by default.

Find Whole Words Only box To get an exact word match, enable this option. Disabled by default.

Use Find Whole Words Only to narrow search results. For example, searching for soft returns topic pages that contain any word that has soft in it, such as Software. Enable Find Whole Words Only to narrow the search results to pages that contain exactly the word soft.

Search Ranking in Results

Search results appear in descending order of rank. The ranking value for a topic is a weighted sum of the occurrences of each search term within the topic. Use these values to gauge the likelihood that the topic contains information that will help you.

For example, you search for the word archive. If a topic includes archive five times in the body text and once in the title text, the ranking value is (5 x 1 point) + (1 x 40 points) = 45.

Titles and subtopic titles get 40 points. Image captions and words marked as UI elements get 3 points, and words in procedure titles get 5 points. All other locations get 1 point per occurrence.

A high ranking value doesn’t guarantee a relevant result. If a result does not fit your needs, consider if a search term that appears frequently in the topic is the cause. You could replace the search term with another. When you’re having difficulty expressing the intention of your search, keywords from the Index or Contents might help you focus on your goal.

Stop Words

A stop word is a common word such as the, of, for, and when. The Search feature automatically ignores the stop words in your search terms. Removing the words makes the search faster.

Click to view all stop words.

a, about, after, all, also, am, an, and, another, any, are, as, at, be, because, been, before, being, between, both, but, by, came, can, come, copyright, corp, corporation, could, did, do, does, each, etc, for, from, get, goes, got, had, has, have, he, her, here, him, himself, his, how, if, in, inc, into, is, it, its, let, like, make, many, me, might, more, most, much, must, my, never, nor, not, now, of, off, on, one, only, or, other, our, out, over, own, reserved, rights, said, same, see, set, shall, she, should, since, so, some, still, such, take, than, that, the, their, them, then, there, these, they, this, those, though, through, to, too, under, us, use, very, was, way, we, well, were, what, when, where, which, while, who, why, will, with, would, yes, yet, you, your

Digits are not ignored, but most punctuation characters are. When you search for config.sys, for example, the period is ignored, but config and sys are used as search terms.

The Search feature gives a warning if search words are found in too many topics. If you see this warning, the search stopped looking for one or more of your words, which limits your results. You should refine your search, especially when the Search Method is AND. If you know which words caused the warning, remove them or try enabling Find Whole Words Only or Match Case.

Spelling, Terminology and Word Stemming

The Help uses Canadian spelling for words such as:

• colour (not color)
• centre (not center)
• analyse (not analyze)
• initialise (not initialize)
• grey (not gray)

In addition to alternate spellings, consider alternate terminology. The editing and effects terminology you are searching for may differ from the Help. You should search for:

• clib libraries (instead of: bins or shot bins)
• proxies (instead of: thumbnails)
• clip I/O (instead of: capture)
• keycode (instead of: edge code)

The search algorithm does not use word stemming (it does not add alternate words based on your word’s stem or root word). However, you can search for a stem when Find Whole Words Only is off. You can strip the suffix (“-s”, “-ed”, “-ing”) off a word so the search might find it. For example, type chang to find change, changed, and changing, or type prox to find proxy and proxies.