Query Language

You can search for any word or phrase on this web site by typing the word or phrase into the query form and clicking the 'start search' button to execute the query. Following, you find a detailed guide to the available search options.

• Boolean and Proximity Operators: Shows how to make more precise queries by inserting Boolean and proximity operators.
• Wildcards: Helps you find pages containing words similar to a given word.
• Free-Text Queries: Describes how to formulate a query based on the meaning of a phrase rather than the exact wording.
• Vector Space Queries: Explains how to get query results that match a list of words and phrases.
• Property Value Queries: Tells how to query for the property values of a file.
• Query Examples: Gives examples of various queries.
• List of Property Names: Lists and describes property names always available for queries.

Searches produce a list of files that contain the word or phrase no matter where they appear in the text. This list gives the rules for formulating queries:

• Consecutive words are treated as a phrase; they must appear in the same order within a matching document.
• Queries are case-insensitive, so you can type your query in uppercase or lowercase.
• You can search for any word except for those in the exception list (for English, this includes a, an, and, as, and other common words), which are ignored during a search.
• Words in the exception list are treated as placeholders in phrase and proximity queries. For example, if you searched for “Word for Windows”, the results could give you “Word for Windows” and “Word and Windows”, because for is a noise word and appears in the exception list.
• Punctuation marks such as the period (.), colon (:), semicolon (;), and comma (,) are ignored during a search.
• To use specially treated characters such as &, |, ^, #, @, $, (, ), in a query, enclose your query in quotation marks (“).
• To search for a word or phrase containing quotation marks, enclose the entire phrase in quotation marks and then double the quotation marks around the word or words you want to surround with quotes. For example, “World-Wide Web or ““Web””” searches for World-Wide Web or “Web”.
• You can insert Boolean operators (AND, OR, and NOT) and the proximity operator (NEAR) to specify additional search information.
• The wildcard character (*) can match words with a given prefix. The query esc* matches the terms “ESC,” “escape,” and so on.
• Free-text queries can be specified without regard to query syntax.
• Vector space queries can be specified.
• ActiveX™ (OLE) and file attribute property value queries can be issued.

Source: Microsoft Corporation, 1997