Boolean searching in Help
- Click the Search tab, and then type the word or phrase you want to find in the Help file
- Click the small triangle pointing to the right beside the search word box to add Boolean operators to your search
- Type more search text, if needed
- Click List topics.
The topics appear in a list.
The AND, OR, NOT, and NEAR operators enable you to precisely define your search by creating a relationship between search terms.
The following table shows how you can use each of these operators when searching in Help. If no operator is specified, Help will use AND - for example, the query spacing border printing is equivalent to spacing AND border AND printing.
| Search for | Example | Results |
|---|---|---|
| Both terms in the same topic. | dib AND palette | Topics containing both the words dib and palette. |
| Either term in a topic. | raster OR vector | Topics containing either the word raster or the word vector or both. |
| The first term without the second term. | ole NOT dde | Topics containing the word OLE, but not the word DDE. |
| Both terms in the same topic, close together. | user NEAR kernel | Topics containing the word user within eight words of the word kernel. |
NOTE: The characters |, & and ! do not work as Boolean operators - you must use OR, AND and NOT.