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Your search will often return either too many or too few documents. When this happens, you need to either widen the scope of your search to return more documents, or narrow its scope to return a smaller list.
For example, searching for the word inventory might result in hundreds of documents. If what you really want are quarterly inventory reports, you can narrow the scope of your search by adding the word report so that the search criteria becomes a phrase reading: inventory report.
Keep in mind that the different people and departments who create documents may not always title them the same way. If you make your search too narrow, you may miss what you want. For example, if you want quarterly sales reports, the search criteria sales, report will find documents with titles like:
The rest of this section describes tips for:
For a quick overview, see Searching.
If you end up with a large number of results, you can narrow down the number of results by:
Adding or Changing Words in the Search Criteria
You can narrow down a long list of results by:
Adding more words to a search phrase. When your search criteria are words separated by spaces or enclosed in quotation marks, iPlanet Compass Server will only list documents that have all of those words in that order somewhere in the item's index entry. Each time you add a word to the criteria, you eliminate those documents that do not have that word in the phrase.
For example, suppose you want to find press releases on new products. You might start by searching for press release. The search will find all documents that contain the phrase press release in their index entries. (It will also return documents with the word releases [plural] because release is contained within releases.)
You can narrow down the search by adding the word product to your criteria so that it reads product press release. But remember that if you narrow your search too far you may exclude items you want to see.
Adding more required words. You can use the AND operator to narrow down results by increasing the number of required words.
For example, press AND release will find documents with titles like:
But press AND release AND kit will only find "Acme Releases the Press Developer's Kit."
Restricting the Search to a Specific Category
You can narrow down a long list of results by limiting your search to only those documents contained in a particular category (and all of that category's subcategories).
For example, if a search for project plan results in too many matching documents, you can restrict your search to the "Research & Development" category to return only project plans from that category and any subcategories below "Research & Development."
To search for Research and Development project plans, follow these steps:
This search finds documents that contain the phrase project plan and are categorized under "Research & Development."
You can narrow down a long list of results by using information about the document such as the author's name or the date when the document was updated as search criteria. For example, if your search for project plans results in several different versions of the documents, you can restrict your search to recently modified documents.
For example, to find project plans that were last modified on July 14, 1997 or later, enter project plan AND Last-Modified >= 7-14-97 in the search box.
(In this example the symbol >= and the
word "AND" are query language
syntax operators.
The phrase Last-Modified specifies that the query be applied to the
dates contained in the document's Last-Modified field.)
For more complex searches, use the Advanced Search page or create more sophisticated searches directly in the search box with search syntax.
If you end up with too few results, you can widen the scope of the search by:
Adding Alternative Words or Phrases to the Criteria
You can widen the scope of your search by adding alternative words and phrases to your search criteria. When you add alternative criteria separated by OR you increase the likelihood of finding documents that meet at least one of your criteria.
For example, suppose you want to find press releases. You might start out your search with the phrase: press release. The search will then find documents containing the phrase press release (or the plural form releases).
You can then widen the search by adding the word announcement using the OR operator:
Now your search will find documents that have either the phrase press release or the word announcement in the index.
Using Individual Words Instead of Phrases
You can widen your search by using individual words rather than phrases. For example, suppose you search for the phrase "product specification" (note the quotation marks) but do not find what you need. You can increase your chances of locating the right document by searching for the words rather than the phrase. To do that, you would change the specification to read either:
Some words have more than one correct spelling. For example, labor is correct in the United States, but labour is correct in the United Kingdom. And sometimes those who create documents misspell the title or keywords. If your search does not find what you are looking for, including the gramatically stemmed variations of your search criteria, you can still widen your results lists to account for spelling variations and misspellings by replacing some of the characters of the words in your search criteria with wild card characters.
For example, if you search for labor you will not find labour, even with the automatic stemming that the Compass Server uses, but if you search for labo* you will find both labor and labour.