Phrase Search
"United States" - will search for this word combination on the simple and advanced search page.  Wildcards cannot be used within a phrase.

Proximity Search
IBM w/4 HP  - (drop the w and use /4 such as IBM /4 HP also). This search finds IBM within 4 words of HP.  Using wildcards with proximity searches may not always return results when including commonly used words.

(Lincoln or "greatest American president") /5 "John Doe will never win" - returns all occurrences of the word "Lincoln" OR the phrase "greatest American president" within 5 words of the phrase "John Doe will never win".  Order does not matter.

WildCards
Use an * as a wildcard representing one or more characters when searching a character string.  See examples below,
document*  - would find Documents, etc.
              d*  - would find anything starting with a d
            do*  - would find anything starting with a do
        *port   - would find words that ended in port.

Use ? as a single character replacement wildcard.  For example:
            f?st - would find the word fast or fest or fist, etc.
   Anders?n - would find all spelling variations of the word Anderson.

Wildcards (* or ?) will only search for numbers or letters.  They will not find delimiters such as spaces, hyphen, colon, etc.  So if you wanted to find AAA and BBB by entering an asterisk wildcard between them, it would only find those two sets of letters with other letters or numbers between them.  It would not find those two sets of letters with delimiters between them such as spaces, hyphens, etc.

If the usage of a wildcard results in a list containing too many hits, you may receive a timeout message.  In that case, revise your search criteria to return fewer hits.

Punctuation and symbols
Are disregarded when doing searching.  This applies both when searching phrases and no phrases.
“orem Utah”, “orem!#$#$! Utah”, and “orem, utah” will all find “orem, Utah” or “orem Utah”.

Boolean Operators
Also the Boolean operators, AND, OR, and NOT as described below can be used.

As an Example, if you wanted to search for anything with Settlement Agreement and John Doe, but not Jane Doe you would enter the following:
"settlement agreement" "john doe" NOT "jane doe"

In the example above, we automatically insert syntax as follows: (a + b) – c   If you wanted to use the same syntax, it would work also, however if you do not, we implicitly insert the syntax.

Lemmatization - Stemming
For words where it is available, the search engine will also include variations of a word by checking the following box on the search page.

Include alternate word forms (Search all fields)

This feature will find examples such as:

mouse would also find mice. 

Generally this will work with plural forms of a word.  It may not include all variations of every word.  A subset of lemmatization is stemming.  You can also add an asterisk to the end of a word to find various forms of the word.

Sorting
NDSearch provides an option at the bottom of the search page to sort the search results.  The sort default is set to show most recent documents first. You can change it to sort by relevancy or name by clicking the link next to the sort options. Because the native sort is by most recent documents, the sort order can be left blank to maintain that default sort.

Spell Checking
The search engine prompts for spell errors when it can identify them and suggests alternatives.  Select either the suggestion or retain the spelling you entered.

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Generally the Advanced Search is used, instead of the Simple Search to further narrow your results to very specific documents or items. Boolean searching is supported.  Advanced Searching can also be performed from the Simple Search line using unique field identifiers.

Hint: The Advanced Search page retains your last search criteria.  Use the Clear Search Criteria link at the top left to clear the previous search criteria.
Use CNTRL-SHFT - C as a keyboard shortcut to clear the previous search criteria.

To Perform an Advanced Search:

1. Click the Search Navigation link at the top of the page.

2. Click the Advanced Search link on the right side of the page.

3. Select the Scope of the search by selecting All Cabinets or a specific cabinet

4. Type the search criteria for the desired fields and perform your search.

5. You can customize the search results page if desired.

A search will display a maximum of 500 items.
 

Attribute (Profile) Lookup

If you click on the lookup box for an attribute to search it, such as Matter, as shown below, then you will see the next dialog.

When you first come into the dialog, it displays ONLY the values that you have recently used creating new profiles.  So to see the complete list from the beginning, you can click the All tab or you can enter a value and search.  This will then display the first 500 records.  You can enter a value in the box at the top of the dialog to locate other values.  If you are using a Code and a Description (which we recommend), then you can select the specific radio button you want to use for locating the value.  For instance, if you select Description and enter a C in the box at the top, you will find those values that start with the letter C.  If you select Key, then you will be able to search for the matter number.  You can set either key or description to be your default.

Boolean Operators

Boolean logic consists of three logical operators: OR, AND, NOT. 

OR logic is most commonly used to search for synonymous terms or concepts. OR logic collates the results to retrieve all the unique records containing one term, the other, or both. The more terms or concepts you combine in a search with OR logic, the more records you will retrieve.

AND operators require that all criteria be met. For example, cats and dogs means that only documents that contain both cats and dogs will be found. The more terms or concepts you combine in a search with AND logic, the fewer records you will retrieve.
 
Suppose you wish to find all documents about document management but you want to avoid seeing documents that contain knowledge management. Because the terms can be related, some documents could include both. In a NOT search you will retrieve documents where only one of the terms is present. NOT logic excludes records from your search results. Be careful when you use NOT: the term you do want may be present in an important way in documents that also contain the word you wish to avoid.

NOTE: In the Document ID field, you can enter a Document ID without the hyphens for quicker input and it will recognize it as a Document ID.

Advanced Search Field Identifiers

Each Advanced Search field has a hidden identifier that can be used to search individual fields from the Simple Search line.

NOT Syntax

NOT is most useful on the simple search page where you can use it between fields. For example, if you wanted to find all documents that contain the word "Enhancement" in the name but want to exclude any Categories that have "Enhancement" in their names, you must use the search syntax " =1( enhancement ) NOT =11( ndsq )".   Note that you have to have a space before the = sign for it to work.

NOT is not a Unary search operator. So from Advanced Search you cannot type "NOT doc", rather, you should type "wpd NOT doc".


EXAMPLES:

Example #1 - Show only Email messages
For a Workspace based on a Client and Matter you may want to put a Category in the Workspace Template that just shows Email messages that were put into NetDocuments in the last 90 days for that Matter.  Use the following syntax:
  1. Select All Cabinets.
  2. Go to the Advanced Search page and enter -90 in the From field next to the Created by.
  3. Next enter msg in the file extension field
  4. Select the Search button.
At the top of the Search Results is a Search string. 
  =5( ^-90-+0 ) =11( msg )

Now, copy the whole string and paste it into the Search criteria when you create the Category in the Workspace or Workspace Template.

Example #2 - Show all documents EXCEPT Email messages
For a Workspace based on a Client and Matter you may want to put a Category in the Workspace Template that shows every item except Email messages that were put into NetDocuments in the last 90 days. Use the following syntax:
  1. Select all Cabinets.
  2. Go to the Advanced Search page and enter -90 in the From field next to the Created by.
  3. Next enter msg in the file extension field
  4. Select the Search button.
At the top of the Search Results is a Search string.  Modify it by preceding the search string with a NOT and spaces on both sides of the word NOT.  Here is a before and after example.
Before     =5( ^-90-+0 ) =11(msg)
After       =5( ^-90-+0 ) NOT =11( msg )

Now, copy the search string and paste it into the Search criteria when you create the Category in the Workspace or Workspace Template.

Because the Workspace is based on a Client and Matter and you created the Category in the Workspace, the Client and Matter will be entered automatically, so they do not have to be entered into the above examples.

Additional Information

• There are many ways to search date criteria effectively. See the Examples of Date Searches.

• You can search for multiple document IDs to return more than one result. NetDocuments allows entry of multiple document numbers separated by spaces, commas, semicolons, “OR”, or any other separator. If you use the document ID as the search criteria, any other search fields you've entered are void since only one document can be returned with that ID.

• Search fields are not case-sensitive—no distinction is made between uppercase and lowercase characters.

• Creation dates are indexed based on Eastern Time Zone, which is where the servers are based.

• Words with a single character and single digit numbers are not searchable unless they are in a Profile field.

• No punctuation or symbols are searchable.

• NetBinders that do not contain documents cannot be searched. When a NetBinder is created, it should contain at least one document in order to locate it, or it should be filed in a folder to be found through navigation.