## Searching the Help for Matching Text

Often you will search first for information using the Index tab on the Search Pane. However, this may not yield the desired topic because Index are created based on defined keywords. You may be thinking a topic should be using a different keyword than it actually does. If you can't find what you're looking for in the Index tab, use the Search tab.

Using this tab, you can search within titles and topic text for a specific word or phrase and even exclude words.

To use the Search tab:

1. Access the PC-DMIS Help File.

2. Click the Show button to display the tabs.

3. Click on the Search tab. Type the text to search for in the Type in the word(s) to search for: box. If you place the text in quotation marks, the help file will attempt to find that exact phrase; otherwise, the help file will try to find all the words in any order. A list of topics appears in the Topics list below.

4. Double-click on the topic to view or click Display. The selected topic appears. The Help file will highlight all the terms that match your typed selection. To turn off this highlight, access the Options button from the PC-DMIS Help File toolbar.

These check boxes at the bottom of the Search tab help to limit or expand your search.

- Search previous results – This check box allows you to search within the existing results. This is helpful if the help returned numerous topics and you want to limit the search.

- Match similar words – This check box allows you to expand your search to similar word forms. For example if you're looking for Export and select this check box, the Help file would return topics with Export-ed, Export-ing etc.

- Search Titles Only – This check box limits your search by only searching within topic titles and not subject matter.

Some Searching Tips:

Are you looking for information on a particular dialog box? One way of course is to open the dialog box and press F1. Another way is to type the dialog box's title followed by the term "dialog box" all in quotation marks. So, to find topics where the View Setup dialog box is listed, type "view setup dialog box".

You can also do this for buttons, check boxes, option buttons, toolbar icons and so on.

So, to find information on the Scale to Fit icon, you could just type "Scale to Fit" in the Search box. Or to limit it even further, you could type:

"Scale to Fit" icon

This finds the phrase "Scale to Fit" along with the word "icon" somewhere in the topic.

Expanding or Limiting Your Searching Using AND, NEAR, OR, and NOT Keywords:

You can use special keywords to limit or expand your search results.

- AND - Use this keyword to limit your search, returning topics that contain all your search terms.

- NEAR - Use this to limit your search to find a word or phrase near in proximity to your other search terms.

- OR - Use this to expand your search, returning topics that contain either one search term OR other search terms.

- NOT - Use this to limit your search, returning topics that do NOT include the specified search term.

These are probably best explained by providing you with an example.

Suppose you want to find topics that discuss the View Setup dialog box.

You could start with both terms. Maybe you want to find all the topics containing either "View" or "Setup". To do this you would use the OR keyword. It expands your search to include topics that contained either search term. For example, if you typed:

View OR Setup

The help file would list all topics containing either the word "View" or the word "Setup".

But you'll end up with the maximum number of search results of 500 topics. That's way too many to search through. You need to limit your search. You could then type:

View AND Setup

The AND keyword searches for topics that have both the word "View" and the word "Setup" somewhere in that topic. Alternately, you simply remove the AND keyword, using this instead:

View Setup

This gives you the same results as if you used the AND keyword between the two words.

To further limit your search, you could instead search for terms near in proximity to each other, by using the use NEAR keyword:

View NEAR Setup

This finds the word "View" in close proximity (within a few lines) of the word "Setup". If the two words were separated by several lines or pages of text, that topic would be excluded.

To further limit your search, you can search for an exact match, by placing the search terms within quotation marks:

“View Setup”

This would return any topic containing the exact phrase "View Setup". This is better, but you'll still get some topics that discuss the "Live View Setup".

To exclude topics containing a word or phrase, use the NOT keyword. For example, if you don't want the word "Live" because the Live View is a PC-DMIS Vision functionality, you could type:

“View Setup” NOT Live

This will find all topics with the exact phrase “View Setup” but excluding anything about the Live View Setup dialog box covered in PC-DMIS Vision.

You can also combine these keywords together, providing you with even more powerful search phrases. For example, if you wanted to see all topics that discussed either the View Setup dialog box or the Live View Setup but didn't want any Settings Editor information, you could type:

"View Setup dialog" OR Live NEAR "View Setup" NOT "Settings Editor"

Understanding the search tools available to you will help you more quickly find the information you need.