At its simplest, a query can be just a word or a phrase. But with the tips on this page, you can expand the focus of your query to give you more complete results. These tips will get you started with basic query language and acquaint you with the full power of Microsoft Index Server.
Look for words with the same prefix. For example, in your query form type key* to find key, keying, keyhole, keyboard, and so on.
Search for all forms of a word. For example, in the form type sink** to find sink, sinking, sank, and sunk.
Search with the keyword NEAR, rather than AND, for words close to each other. For example, both of these queries, movies and weekend and movies near weekend, look for the words movies and weekend on the same page. But with NEAR, the returned pages are ranked in order of proximity: The closer together the words are, the higher the rank of that page.
Refine your queries with the AND NOT keywords to exclude certain text from your search. For example, if you want to find all instances of classes but not J-Term, write the following query:
classes AND NOT J-Term
Church OR Chapel
This query finds all pages that mention Church or Chapel or both.
Put quotation marks around keywords if you want Index Server to take
them literally. For instance, if you type the following query:
"weekend ski trips"
Index Server will literally look for the complete phrase weekend ski trips. But
if you type the same query without the quotation marks:
weekend ski trips
Index Server searches all documents for the words weekend, ski and trips.