Search Syntax

This page contains the following content:

Basic Search Operators
Field-specific Searching
Date Fields
Searching for Dates, Email Address, and/or Credit Card Numbers
Extracted Text Searching
Proximity Searches

Click here to view the printable version of the Search Syntax Quick Reference Sheet.

Basic Search Operators

IPRO Eclipse allows you to combine or restrict full-text search terms using the operators listed in the following table.

operator	syntax	description
And	and	Search for all words and or phrases that are listed Example: smith and deficit and profit Results: Records including all three words, in any order and in any indexed field (unless a field-specific search is conducted), will be returned.
Or	or	Search for any of the terms that are listed. Example: profit or deficit or revenue Results: Records that include any one of the three words listed will be returned.
Not	and not or not not	Search for records that do not include a particular term. Example: profit and not deficit profit or not deficit not profit Results: These searches find records that contain a) profit but not deficit, b) instances of profit or none of deficit, c) no instances of profit. As shown, NOT can start a search request. If NOT is not the first connector in a request, it must be used with either AND or OR as shown in the examples. Use of parentheses helps clarify the search.
Phrases	space or " " (quotation marks)	To search for a phrase, enter the phrase the way it normally appears. Use quotation marks around a phrase to ensure that connector words are interpreted as part of the phrase. Examples: gene summer "profit and deficit" Results: First example results include records that include the name genesummer (not gene ray summer). Second example include only those records with the exact phrase. Without quotation marks, an AND search for the terms profit and deficit would be conducted. Notes: Stop words in phrases are not ignored. For example, a search for proof of ownership would find documents containing that phrase, including the stop word of. Regarding phrases that include punctuation, see "Special Characters".
Wildcards	* (asterisk)	An asterisk represents zero or more characters. It can be included anywhere in a search term. Example: automo* or phi*p Results: In the first case, results will include records including terms such as automobile and automotive. In the second case, results will include records including names such as phillip, philip, and philllip, as well as phitap.
	? (question mark)	A question mark represents any single character. Example: su?anne Results: Results will include records with spellings such as susanne, and suzanne, but not suzzanne.
	= (equal sign)	An equal sign represents any single digit. Example: ABC==2 Results: Results will include all IDs or other instances of ABC followed by three digits and ending in 2, such as ABC1232, but not ABC1A32 or ABC12342.

Field-specific Searching

If your administrator has indexed specific fields in your case, those fields can be searched using the main search bar. This is a basic text search limited to a specific field. If you have any question about which fields are indexed, contact your administrator.

For example, author contains (jane smith). This search looks for records in which the Author field includes the entered name.

To learn the fields in your IPRO Eclipse database:

Study the fields in your case.

If some fields are not visible, right-click a column heading and click Grid Display Options to display needed columns.

A full-text search that is limited to a specific field can include the operators in the following table in addition to those listed in table above. To search for date see "Date fields."

Field

Syntax

Description

Contains

contains

Search for records for which a particular field contains a particular term or phrase (other content may also exist).

Examples:

email to contains (jan smith)

email to contains (smith or hall)

Results: The first search looks for records in which the Author field includes the names jan and smith. The second search looks for records in which the author field contains the name smith or hall.

Note: The wildcard * (asterisk) can be used with this operator. For example, consider the following searches.

custodian custodians (Jan)

Results will include the name Jan, as in Jan Smith or jan.smith@smithco.com

custodian custodians (jan*)

Results will contain Jan, Jane, and Janet, as well as other names/terms starting with "jan," such as janitor.

Does not contain

contains *? and not

Search for records for which a particular field does not contain a particular term or phrase (other content may exist).

Example: author contains (*? and not brenner)

Results: This search looks for records in which the Author field does not contain name brenner.

Note: The wildcard * (asterisk) can be used with this operator as described above.

Date Fields

Note: If your administrator has configured the case index to automatically recognize dates, see "Searching for dates, email addresses, and/or credit card numbers."

This discussion refers to searching date fields. For DateTime fields, use Advanced Search.

To search for dates using a field-specific search, note:

To perform a search on a date field using the main Search bar, the field must be indexed. If it is not indexed, use Advanced Search to search date fields. Contact your administrator if you have any questions.
Specify the field containing the date(s) of interest, such as creation date. For long or complex field names (particularly containing spaces), enclose the name in parentheses. See examples in the following table.
Enter a date in the format YYYYMMDD, regardless of the format that appears in the case. For example, the case may show 12/3/2000; you would enter 20001203.
If needed, enter a range in the format (date1~~date2), as in (20000101~~20001231).

If combining a date search with another search, use parentheses to enclose the field name and date (or date range). See example in the following table. You can search for a date alone in a DateTime field by using the * (asterisk) wildcard, for example: 20101130*.

What to find	syntax
All records with a Creation Date of December 22, 2008	creation date contains (20081222)
All records with a Sent Date other than December 22, 2008	sent date contains (*? and not 20081222)
All records with a Creation Date date between January 1, 2001 and December 31, 2008	creation date contains (20010101~~20081231)
All records containing an email address and a 2013 Sent Date	jsmith@myco.com and (sent date contains (20130101~~20131231))

Searching for Dates, Email Address, and/or Credit Card Numbers

Use the following syntax if your administrator has configured the case index to automatically recognize dates, email addresses, and credit card numbers. Check with your administrator if you have questions.

Dates

With automatic date recognition, anything that appears to be a date is found when you search for a date using months (English-language names, including common abbreviations) or numerical formats. Examples of date formats that are recognized include:

June 15, 2013
15 Jun 13
2013/06/15

6/15/13
6-15-13
The fifteenth of June, two thousand thirteen

The basic syntax is date(date). See the following table for details and examples.

Date Ranges

Do not use open-ended date ranges. To search for all dates before or after a particular date, use a range that includes the minimum and maximum dates to cover the needed range.

Dates can range from the year 1000 to the year 2900.

The basic syntax is date(date1 to date2).

See the table below for details and examples.

Email Addresses

With automatic email address recognition, valid email addresses (such as sales@iprotech.com) will be found when you search for an email address, regardless of the alphabet settings for the “at” (@) and period (.) characters, or any other punctuation that may be present in an email address.

The basic syntax is mail(emailaddress).

See the table below for details and examples.

Credit Card Numbers

With automatic credit-card number recognition, any sequence of numbers following a valid credit card number criteria (as defined by one of the major credit card issuers) will be found when you perform a credit-card search, regardless of the pattern of spaces or punctuation embedded in the number.

Examples of credit card formats include:

1234-5678-1234-5678
1234567812345678
1234 5678 1234 5678

Tests used by the credit card issuers for card validity are used to identify valid numbers. These tests are not perfect, however, and some numbers may be found that are not actually credit card numbers.

The basic syntax is creditcard(numbers). See the following table for details and examples.

search type	syntax	description
Date	date(date)	Find a specific date. This search can be combined with other searches, such as a proximity search or a field search. Examples: date(jun 05 2013) date(6/15/2013 to 13/31/2013) date(jun 15 2013) w/10 stadium datefield conains date(12-31-2013)
Date range	date(date1 to date2)	Find dates in a specified range (not an open-ended range). Dates can range from a year 1000 to the year 2900 Examples: date(1/1/2014 to 12/31/2014) Find all dates occurring in 2014. date(1-15/10 to 12-31-2900) Find all dates on or after January 15, 2010. date(jan 1 1000 to jun 15 2013) Find all dates before June 15, 2013.
Email address	mail(email address)	Find email address. Wildcard characters allowed in the email address include: ?(question mark): Find any single character. (asterisk): Find any number of characters. Examples: mail(sales@iprotech.com) mail(sa@iprotech.com) mail(jh?ll@iprotech.com)
Credit card number	creditcard(number)	Find credit card numbers. Wildcard characters ? and * are allowed as described previously. Examples: creditcard(1234123412341234) creditcard(1234*)

Extracted Text Searching

Use the following syntax to limit a search to text in extracted text files (as opposed to fields). Results are highlighted on the Extracted Text tab.

syntax	description
//TEXT contains (term)	Search extracted text for the specified term or phrase. For example: //TEXT contains (limited resources)
//TEXT contains (term1 or term2)	Search extracted text for either of the specified terms or phrases. For example: //TEXT contains (solar or wind)
//TEXT contains (term1 and term2)	Search extracted text for both of the specified terms or phrases. For example: //TEXT contains (electricity and gas)

Proximity Searches

Proximity searching applies to full-text searches and involves looking for two words or phrases that

are located before, after, or within some number of words from one another (in any order),
are located within some number of words from the first or last word in a field, or
are not located within some number of words from one another.

Note:

Except for first- or last-word proximity searches, full-text proximity searching within IPRO Eclipse spans fields and may therefore return additional results under very rare conditions. The SQL platform utilizes dtSearch for full-text searching, which does not limit the proximity search to within one field.

For example, if you search for DAVIS w/5 JONES, and DAVIS exists at the end of Field 1 and JONES exists at the beginning of Field 2 in a particular record, then that record will be included in the search results even though DAVIS and JONES do not exist within the same field. This currently is a limitation of the dtSearch engine. The potential for this scenario is rare; searches will not miss documents but may occasionally return additional results.

Syntax and usage for full-text proximity searches are as listed in the following table.

Operator	syntax	description
Within	W/	Search for records in which two terms are within a specific distance of one another, in any order: Example: profit w/5 deficit Results: The search results would include records containing both of the following expressions: The profit will be offset by the deficit... The deficit will not impact the profit...
Not within	not w/	Search for words that are no closer than a specified number of words. Example: profit not w/5 deficit Results: Results will include records where profit does not exist within five words of deficit. Will be included in search results: The profit will be offset by this year's annual deficit... Will not be included in search results: The deficit and profit will... This search will return all records where profit does not exist within five words of deficit. Included would be records that do not include the word profit or deficit as well as records in which profit and deficit are separated by more than five words.
Before	pre/	Search for a word that precedes another word by a specified amount. Example: profit pre/5 deficit Results: The word profit must occur five or fewer words before the word deficit.
First word proximity	w/# xfirst-word	Search for a word that is near the first word in a field by a specified amount. Examples: profit w/5 xfirstword Results: The word profit must occur five or fewer words after the first word of a field.
Last word proximity	w/# xlast-word	Search for a word that is near the last word in a field by a specified amount. Examples: profit w/5 xlastword Results: The word profit must occur five or fewer words before the last word of a field.

Additional Full-text Search Options

In addition to searching for a literal term in a full-text search, IPRO Eclipse includes search options listed in the following table.

Option	syntax	description
Fuzzy	% (selective)	Search for terms that are a close, but not an exact, match. Useful for searching text fields in which some characters may not have been interpreted correctly by an OCR engine. Although you should use Advanced Search with the Fuzzy option for most fuzzy searches, you can specify fuzziness selectively using the percent character, %. The number of % characters included determines the number of differences that will be ignored during a search. The position of the % characters determines how many letters at the start of the word have to match exactly. For example: aut%%mobile Results: Returns records containing the word automobile and other words beginning with aut with at most two differences between it and automobile. Fuzzy search results may vary, depending on such factors as the length of the search term and/or position of incorrect characters.
Phonic	#	Search for terms that sound similar but are spelled differently. Enter a phonic search by using the number sign, #. For example: #smith Results: Returns records containing the name smith as well as smithe and smythe.
Stemming	~	Search for terms and all words beginning with the root form of the word. For example: operation~ Results: The root of operation would be identified as operat, so results will include operation, operate, and operator.