1. Searching A View
Last Updated: 1/10/2003
Applies to: Lotus Notes 3.2+
While looking at a Lotus Notes "view" (subject lines of e-mail messages, subject lines of notes in a discussion database, table of contents of a Notes database, etc.), you can search the lines of the view via Ctrl-F or the menu Edit | Find/Replace... or the flashlight toolbar button. This searches the view, but not the entire documents, for the specified string. If you are certain that the Notes document (mail message, note, etc.) is included in the view, and you know a string that is contained in the view, this may be the easiest way to find the document.
Click Options... in the Find dialog box to see the advanced options, where you can specify a case-sensitive/insensitive search, search for whole words only, search forwards/backward/both, etc. There is no support for wildcards, patterns, or regular expressions.
Beware that, if any of the lines of the view wrap to multiple physical lines in the window, the found text may not be scrolled into sight. Due to a bug in Notes (still there in version 5.0.3) you may have to scroll down a couple lines to see the matched text. Unfortunately, to do that, you have to dismiss the modal Find dialog box. Fortunately, you can continue searching for the same string by hitting Ctrl-G, so you don't have to keep popping up and dismissing the Find dialog box.
Thanks to Ed Schindler for contributing to this tip.
--Fred
2. Searching A Single Document
Last Updated: 1/10/2003
Applies to: Lotus Notes 3.2+
While looking at a Lotus Notes document (e-mail message, note in a discussion database, help page, etc.), you can search the text of the document via Ctrl-F or the menu Edit | Find/Replace... or the flashlight toolbar button. This searches the current document for the specified string.
Click Options... in the Find dialog box to see the advanced options, where you can specify a case-sensitive/insensitive search, search for whole words only, search forwards/backward/both, etc. There is no support for wildcards, patterns, or regular expressions. Also, attached files are not searched.
Unfortunately, the Find dialog box is modal, so you can't find find an occurrence of the string, edit it, find the next, etc. without dismissing the Find dialog. Fortunately, you can continue searching for the same string by hitting Ctrl-G, so you don't have to keep popping up and dismissing the Find dialog box.
--Fred
3. Searching Multiple Documents
Last Updated: 1/10/2003
Applies to: Lotus Notes 5.0+
While looking at a Lotus Notes "view" (subject lines of e-mail messages, subject lines of notes in a discussion database, table of contents of a Notes database, etc.), you can search the entire contents of all documents in the view (e-mail messages, notes in a discussion database, help pages, etc.) via the "search bar". To display the search bar, use the magnifying glass or binoculars button in the toolbar, or the menu View | Search Bar.
In older versions of Notes, and in Notes databases that are not "indexed", the capabilities offered by the search bar are similar to those described above. You can only search for exact matches of specified strings.
As of Notes 5.0, a database may be "indexed". This means that the documents have all been searched in advance, and an index has been built of all of the words found in them. Indexed searches have several advantages and disadvantages, discussed in the following tips.
--Fred
4. Indexed Searches
Last Updated: 1/10/2003
Applies to: Lotus Notes 5.0+
As of Notes 5.0, a database may be "indexed". This means that the documents have all been searched in advance, and an index has been built of all of the words found in them. Indexed searches have several advantages and disadvantages, discussed in the following tips.
--Fred
1. Indexed Searches Are Faster
Last Updated: 1/10/2003
Applies to: Lotus Notes 5.0+
An indexed search of a Notes database should be faster than an un-indexed search, though personally, I haven't really noticed any difference.
--Fred
2. Searching Attachments
Last Updated: 1/10/2003
Applies to: Lotus Notes 5.0+
The un-indexed searches described above do not find matches that occur inside attached documents (Microsoft Word files, etc.). Indexed searches do search attachments.
However, any document with a size greater than 6MB, including all attachments, is omitted from the index. Therefore, no search will find such a document. This is documented in Help | Help Topics | Index | Indexes, full-text | creating | To create a full-text index | Indexing and size.
--Fred
3. No Searching For Partial Words
Last Updated: 1/10/2003
Applies to: Lotus Notes 5.0+
Indexed searches only find whole word matches. You can't search for "read" and find "tread" as you can with un-indexed searches.
--Fred
4. Searching For Combinations Of Words
Last Updated: 1/10/2003
Applies to: Lotus Notes 5.0+
Indexed searches allow you to search for various combinations of words, like:
abc AND (def OR ghi) AND NOT "xyz pdq"
In the More tab of the search bar, there is a Multiple words... button that allows you to specify up to 8 words and the choice to search for documents that contain Any or All of the words.
However, I can't imagine why would anyone would use this button. Why subject yourself to this clunky interface with its limited set of choices, when you can just type an expression like the one above directly into the Search for box? Much more powerful, and also easier to use!
--Fred
5. Searching For Exact Phrases
Last Updated: 1/10/2003
Applies to: Lotus Notes 5.0+
If you type a phrase containing multiple words like:
the quick brown fox
as an indexed search, it searches for the exact phrase, which is the same behavior you get when you enclose the phrase in double quotes:
"the quick brown fox"
Such a search will find only documents that contain the exact phrase, not those that contain all of the individual words. To override this behavior, you have to type something like:
the AND quick AND brown AND fox
--Fred
6. Searching For Word Variants
Last Updated: 1/10/2003
Applies to: Lotus Notes 5.0+
In the More tab of the search bar, there is an option that controls whether or not "word variants" are matched during a search. With this option, you can find things like:
searched
searching
searches
when searching for the word:
search
--Fred
7. Fuzzy Search
Last Updated: 1/10/2003
Applies to: Lotus Notes 5.0+
In the More tab of the search bar, there is an option that controls whether or not "fuzzy searches" are done. I'm not sure exactly what the rules are, but this searches for phrases "similar" to the one you specified. Try it if your search is coming up empty.
--Fred
8. Searching For Recently Added Content
Last Updated: 1/10/2003
Applies to: Lotus Notes 5.0+
Unfortunately, an indexed search is only as accurate as its index, and indexes do not get updated immediately when documents are added, deleted, or changed.
The More tab of the search bar offers an Update Index button (or Create Index..., if not yet indexed), but you may not be authorized to update the index on all databases you use. Even if you are authorized, the button may not update the index immediately; it may only schedule an update to occur soon. Get used to the idea that the most recently added documents and most recent changes may not be reflected in the index.
The properties of an indexed database, accessible via the menu File | Database | Properties... | Full Text (magnifying glass icon), show when its index was last updated and how often it is typically updated (probably once per day or so).
--Fred
9. Deleting A Database Index
Last Updated: 1/10/2003
Applies to: Lotus Notes 5.0+
Use the menu File | Database | Properties... | Full Text (magnifying glass icon) | Delete Index... to delete the index of an indexed database, reverting it back to an un-indexed database. This is useful if you need to search for a string that is not necessarily a whole word.
--Fred
5. No Searching For Wildcards, Patterns Or Regular Expressions
Last Updated: 1/10/2003
Applies to: Lotus Notes 5.0+
Lotus Notes has no support for searches that include wildcards, patterns, or Unix-style "regular expressions". You can only search for words, strings, and combinations thereof.
--Fred
6. Stepping Through Matches From The Preview Pane
Last Updated: 1/10/2003
Applies to: Lotus Notes 5.0+
Once you've done a search from a view, you can step through the matches via the left and right arrow buttons next to the Clear Results button in the More tab of the search bar. The first click opens the preview pane showing the contents of the first matched document in the view, with the document scrolled to the first match, with all matches highlighted in green. Subsequent clicks scroll forward to the next match in the document or back to the previous match in the document.
Having said all that, I can't get it to behave consistently. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes, it finds only the first match in a document, sometimes all of them. I have no idea what the pattern is yet.
To close the preview pane, use the menu View | Document Preview | Show Preview, or drag the divider to the bottom of the window.
--Fred
7. Stepping Through Matches In An Open Document
Last Updated: 1/10/2003
Applies to: Lotus Notes 5.0+
Once you've done a search from a view and explicitly opened a matched document, you can step through the matches within the document via the Ctrl-Plus and Ctrl-Minus keys. Matches are scrolled into sight and highlighted in green.
Having said that, I can't get it to behave consistently. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes, it finds only the first match in a document, sometimes all of them. I have no idea what the pattern is yet.
You might have better luck, after opening the document, using Ctrl-F to do a search within the document, and Ctrl-G to find each subsequent match, though even that seems to sometime get hung up on the first match. Hmmm...
--Fred
8. Sorting Matched Documents
Last Updated: 1/10/2003
Applies to: Lotus Notes 5.0+
In the More tab of the search bar, there is an option that controls the order in which matched documents are displayed in a view. The options are discussed in the following tips.
--Fred
1. Keep Current Order (Sortable)
Last Updated: 1/10/2003
Applies to: Lotus Notes 5.0+
The Keep current order (sortable) option shows the matched documents in the same order they would have if no search were in effect. This mode is useful if you have already sorted the view meaningfully, and don't want to lose that order. There doesn't seem to be a way to re-sort the documents, however, without re-doing the search.
This option automatically turns on the "search results only" mode (see menu View | Show | Search Results Only), which means that only matching documents are represented in the view.
For databases containing hierarchies of documents (for example, a discussion database with top level topic documents that can have associated trees of comment documents), each matched document can be represented in the view by itself, or by an ancestor document. If you click the menu View | Expand All, or the "++" button in the toolbar, each matched document is represented by itself. If you click the menu View | Collapse All, or the "--" button in the toolbar, each matched document is represented by its top level ancestor document. The initial items shown depend on which mode you were in before the search.
In any case, a checkmark is used to indicate whether the document is a match or only the ancestor of a match. If there is a checkmark next to the document, it is a match, but may also be an ancestor of documents containing matches. If no, checkmark, it is only an ancestor. You can click the usual Notes triangles (or the various keyboard shortcuts -- Plus, Minus, Asterisk, Shift-Plus, Shift-Minus, Shift-Asterisk, etc.) to expand and collapse branches of the tree, but only the branches with matches are shown.
One thing I don't like about this mode is that you can't see both a matched document and its ancestors, unless the ancestors also happen to contain matches.
Clicking on the checkmark itself de-selects the document, which causes it to disappear from the view. This can be useful, if you want to work your way through the list of matches, explicitly removing the false hits. However, it is easy to accidentally click a checkmark, intending to click the expand/collapse triangle, and have the document disappear without warning. If you do so, there doesn't seem to be a way to bring it back into the view, without bringing back all others as well by re-searching. Too fragile!
--Fred
2. Show All Documents (Sortable)
Last Updated: 1/10/2003
Applies to: Lotus Notes 5.0+
The Show all documents (sortable) option is similar to the Keep current order (sortable) option, except that it shows both matching and non-matching documents. You can flip back and forth between these 2 modes via the menu View | Show | Search Results Only.
In this mode, a selection checkmark is shown next to each matching document, but only if the matching document is not collapsed out of sight. You can use the various expand/collapse techniques to manipulate the hierarchy of documents as usual, to find all of the checkmarks. Hit F3 and Shift-F3 to skip to the next and previous matching documents. If they are collapsed out of sight, these keys take you to their visible ancestor, and you have to expand to find the matching document.
--Fred
3. Sorting Matched Documents By Relevance
Last Updated: 1/10/2003
Applies to: Lotus Notes 5.0+
When matched documents are sorted by Relevance, Notes displays the most relevant at the top of the list, and displays a color-coded (actually grey levels only) bar to the left of the list showing relevance levels. This mode also has the following side effects:
1. No selection checkmarks are shown.
2. The "fully expanded mode" (++) is turned on.
3. The "search results only" mode is turned on.
--Fred
4. Sorting Matched Documents By Date Modified
9. Specifying Fields To Search
Last Updated: 1/10/2003
Applies to: Lotus Notes 5.0+
In the More tab of the search bar, there are options to specify which fields of a document to search. You can search for documents that contain one combination of words in one field and/or other combinations in other fields.
--Fred
10. Query By Example
Last Updated: 1/10/2003
Applies to: Lotus Notes 5.0+
In the More tab of the search bar, there is a Fill out example form... option to do a typical "query by example" search. It shows you a blank form and you type in the words to be matched in each field.
--Fred
11. Max Search Results
Last Updated: 1/10/2003
Applies to: Lotus Notes 5.0+
In the More tab of the search bar, you can specify the maximum number of matching documents to find. The default is 250, which you may find too low. If you don't find a document you expected to find, you may need to increase the limit.
--Fred
12. Saving Named Searches
Last Updated: 1/10/2003
Applies to: Lotus Notes 5.0+
In the More tab of the search bar, you can name and save the searches you define, and later re-search the database by the same criteria. If you have sufficient access rights in the database, you can save the searches as shared searches, available to all users of the database.
--Fred
13. Help On Searching
Last Updated: 1/10/2003
Applies to: Lotus Notes 3.2+
For more information about searching Notes databases, see the Notes on-line help. Click on the option you want to know about and hit F1, or use the menu Help | Help Topics. Useful topics include:
Searching for Information
Search troubleshooting
Search tips
Search options
Fuzzy search
etc.
--Fred