WebCD Search

The search engine on this CD allows you to search documents on this CD. Scroll down to read the full text or click on one of the following links:

Performing Searches   Search Features
Structured Search
Words and Phrases
Natural Language
Field Searching
Search Results Dialog Box
  Wildcards
Phonic Searching
Stemming
Numeric Range
Search Term Highlighting
Document Abstracts
File Types


Structured Search

A search request consists of a group of words, phrases, or macros linked by connectors such as AND and OR that indicate the relationship between them. Examples:

kiwi fruit AND banana    the phrase "kiwi fruit" and the word "banana".
kiwi OR banana    either word can be present.
kiwi W/5 banana    kiwi must occur within 5 words of banana.
kiwi NOT W/5 banana    kiwi must not occur within 5 words of banana.
kiwi AND NOT banana    only kiwi must be present.
kiwi W/5 XFIRSTWORD    kiwi must occur in the first five words.
kiwi W/5 XLASTWORD    kiwi must occur in the last five words.

If you use more than one connector, you should use parentheses to indicate precisely what you want to search for. For example, the search string "kiwi and banana or orange juice" could mean (kiwi and banana) or orange, or it could mean kiwi and (banana or orange).

Noise words are words, such as "if", "of", "at", "can", "it", "to", and "the," that are so common that they are not useful in searches. To save time, noise words are not indexed and are ignored in searches.

Search terms may include the following special characters:

? Matches any single character. For example, appl? would match apply and apple but not apples
* Matches zero or more characters.
For example:
appl* would match apple, application, etc.
*cipl* would match principle, participle, etc.
ap*ed would match applied, approved, etc.
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% Fuzzy search. Fuzzy searching will find a word even if it is misspelled. For example, a fuzzy search for apple will find appple.

Add fuzziness to your search term using the % character. The number of % characters added determines the number of differences the search will ignore when searching for a word. The position of the % characters determines how many letters at the start of the word have to match exactly. For example:

   br%occoli Word must begin with br and have at most one difference between it and broccoli.
   b%%roccoli Word must begin with b and have at most two differences between it and broccoli.
# Phonic search. Phonic searching looks for a word that sounds like the word you are searching for and begins with the same letter. For example, a phonic search for Smith will also find Smithe and Smythe. Request a phonetic search by placing a # in front of the search term, for example, #smith.
~ Stemming. Extends a search to cover grammatical variations on a word. For example, a search for a base word like "support" would find the base word with various endings, such as "supports", "supported", "supporting". A search for "applied" would also find "applying", "applies", and "apply". Use stemming by adding the ~ character at the end of words you want stemmed in a search, for example, apply~.
~~ Numeric range. To search for a numeric range, separate the numbers in the range with ~~ like this:
kiwi w/5 12~~17
This request would find any document containing kiwi within 5 words of a number between 12 and 17, inclusive. Numeric range searches only work with positive integers. For purposes of numeric range searching, decimal points and commas are treated as spaces and minus signs are ignored. For example, -123,456.78 would be interpreted as: 123 456 78 (three numbers).

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Words and Phrases

You do not need to use any special punctuation or commands to search for a phrase. Simply enter the phrase the way it ordinarily appears. You can use a phrase anywhere in a search request. Example:
     kiwi w/5 fruit salad
If a phrase contains a noise word, the search engine will skip over the noise word when searching for it. Noise words are words, such as "if", "of", "at", "can", "it", "to", "an", "are", "but", and "the," that are so common that they are not useful in searches. To save time, noise words are not indexed and are ignored in searches. For example, a search for statue of liberty would retrieve any document containing the word statue, any intervening word, and the word liberty. Or a search for the President of the United States would retrieve any document containing the word President, any intervening word(s), and the phrase United States.

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Natural Language Searching

A natural language search request is any combination of words, phrases, or sentences. Search results are sorted by their relevance to the search request. Weighting of retrieved documents takes into account:

  • The number of documents each word in your search request appears in (the more documents a word appears in, the less useful it is in distinguishing relevant from irrelevant documents)
  • The number of times each word in the request appears in the documents, and
  • The density of hits in each document. Noise words and search connectors like NOT and OR are ignored.

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Field Searching

If field searching has been defined for this CD, search fields will be listed on the search form. String fields have a textbox for field value entry. Choice fields have a drop-down selection listbox.

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Search Term Highlighting

If the search term highlighting feature has been defined for this CD, search terms in search results documents will be highlighted in red. Additionally, each search term will be preceded and followed by arrows, allowing you to jump to the previous and next search term hits.

Jump to previous search term hit.
Jump to next search term hit.

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Document Abstracts

If document abstracts have been defined for this CD, abstract text will appear beneath each search result. The abstract consists of the first x characters of the document, where x is up to 2000 characters.

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File Types

The search engine on this CD allows you to search through the following types of documents:

  • Ami Pro
  • HTML
  • Microsoft Excel
  • Microsoft Rich Text Format
  • Microsoft Word for DOS
  • Microsoft Word for Windows versions 1, 2, 6, 7, and 8 (Word 97)
  • Microsoft Works
  • Multimate Advantage II
  • Multimate version 4
  • PDF
  • PowerPoint 97
  • WordPerfect and WordPerfect for Windows versions 5.0, 5.1, 5.2, 6.0, 6.1, 7
  • WordStar versions 4, 5, 6
  • WordStar 2000
  • Write
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Search Results Dialog Box

The Search Results dialog displays a list of all documents that match the search criteria entered.

Search Results Options

  • Click a document to display that document in the browser.
  • Click Pin Pin or Unpin Un-Pin to either keep the Search Results window on top or have it be closed each time you jump to the next document. If you choose to have it close when you display a document, use the Search Results button Search Results on the WebCD Toolbar to re-display the Search Results window.
  • Click the Search button Search to perform another search.
  • Click the Next Results Next Document button to display the next page of search results.
  • Click the Previous Results Previous Document button to display the previous page of search results.

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Copyright 1999 MarketScape Inc., Colorado Springs, CO USA. All Rights Reserved.