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There are two types of search available: simple and advanced. The simple search lets you enter a search term or phrase and searches for any items in the community that match all of the words you entered. This is also the type of search provided by the search box that is generally available at the top of each page. The advanced search, described below, gives you more control over the search.
You can search for items within the current community, or you can search for items across all communities of which you are currently a member.
You can either search by specifying text to search for, or you can specify one of the filters such as "show items created or modified in the last n days".
To enter search text, there are four input boxes you can use. The following list shows what would match if you entered "red balloon" into each of the boxes in turn:
- "with all of these words" - will only match text containing both the words "red" and "balloon", eg. "the large red balloon" and also "the balloon was red" but not "my balloon is yellow"
- "with the exact phrase" - will only match the text "the large red balloon"
- "with any of these words" - will match any text containing either the word "red" or the word "balloon", eg. "the large red balloon", "the balloon was red", "my balloon is yellow" and also "red sky at night"
- "without these words" - this is only used in conjunction with text entered in one or more of the previous three fields. This will filter the results and only match text that does not contain the words entered. So, for example, if you entered "red balloon" in the first field and "large" in this field, it would not match "the large red balloon" because it contained the word "large" which you explicitly said must not appear.
Normally you would only need to enter text into one of the first three input boxes and possibly also the "without..." box for a single search query, but you can specify more complex search queries. For example, if you entered the following:
- "with all of these words" - red
- "with the exact phrase" - party guests
- "with any of these words" - house garden balloon
- "without these words" - birthday
then the search would only match text which contained the word red AND the phrase party guests AND any of the words house, garden or balloon, BUT NOT the word birthday.
You can use the "wild-card" character * to match any number of characters (including none) in an individual word. So if you entered ball*, that will match any comments which contain words like "balloon", "ballast", "balls" or even just "ball". You can use the wild-card character at the end of a word, or in the middle or a word (eg. ba*n will match "balloon" or "basin" etc.) If you try and specify a wild-card character at the start of a word it will be ignored.
As well as entering text, you also need to specify which types of item you are looking for. Tick one of more of the boxes to specify which item-types you want to search.
If you want to list all items of a particular type, then just select one item type without any other search criteria.
Finally, you can restrict the search results to only show items which have been created or modified in the last n days. For searches within the current community you can also restrict the results to only show items that have been created or modified by a specified community member.
Does this answer your questions? For more information or for a specific query, please use the support form.