User Manual/Search Tab

Explorer++

Using Search Effectively

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This electronic book (Explorer++ - Help File) contains a great deal of information about the program and its use.  The manual is organized using menus and topics, but it may sometimes be difficult to find the right information!  This book's Search tab can help in this regard, but Search has more power than might be evident on the surface.  Following are some hints for using Search effectively.

 

use HIGHLIGHT On the tool bar, click Options and make sure that the Search Highlight feature is ON.  If the menu item says "Search Highlight Off", then the feature is already enabled.  This feature will highlight items in the text that are found by the search.
 
use WILDCARDS The search utility normally looks for words (or phrases) as-is (not case sensitive).  This means that a search for the word divide will not find any occurrences of the word divides  Use wildcards to expand your search:
  * including an asterisk (ie. *) somewhere in the search target finds more combinations of the target, just as it does from a DOS (or Command) prompt.  The asterisk stands for any (optional) multiple characters.  Using divid* as the target finds divide, divided and dividing as well.  The search target *divid* finds all the previous, plus will find individual, etc.
  ? including a question mark somewhere in the search target finds any (mandatory) single character in that position.  Using divide? as the target finds divides, divider and divides but won't find divide or dividing.

Enabling the Match similar words option will help to find plurals, etc., but a wildcard search can be more versatile.
 

use PHRASES Searching for ctrl key finds occurrences of both words in the same topic, but not necessarily together!  Using "ctrl key" (enclosed in double quotes) treats it as a phrase and only finds that phrase.  Quotation characters cannot be found using the search, since they enclose a phrase.  Note that when searching for file names with extensions (eg. EXPLORER++.EXE), use a phrase also (eg. "EXPLORER++.EXE") otherwise the period will separate the search into 2 distinct words.
 
use BOOLEANS

If you are looking for more than one word (or phrase), you may separate them with one of the reserved boolean words to restrict your search:
  AND Topics must contain both words, eg. tip AND key will only find topics containing both words or phrases.  Note that tip AND key  is equivalent to tip key .
  OR Topics may contain either word or both words.  Searching for ctrl OR alt finds topics containing either or both of the words, anywhere in the topic.
  NOT Topics may not contain the word or phrase following NOT, as in ctrl NOT alt, which will find occurrences of ctrl, providing alt is not found on the page.
  NEAR Topics must contain both words or phrases, but close together.  A search for macro NEAR user will find phrases containing both words, but will not find pages where the words are far apart.  This search mode is not effective where pages/topics are short, since close together and far apart are not precise terms; NEAR works best on larger documents or pages.

 

Searching in the Document pane

Once you are reading a particular page, it is also possible to search for a word or phrase within that page by:

  • clicking the mouse on the right-hand pane (ie. the actual page you are reading), preferably near the start of the page. This sets Windows' focus on the text, although usually no visible change is evident.
  • press <ctrl>F to initiate the Find dialog
  • follow the instructions in the dialog (simple search options)

Unfortunately, the search highlight color in the document pane is not changeable; highlighting words which are already written in the highlight color (or close) renders them difficult - but not impossible - to see.

    Tip: If a global search has been done which highlights certain phrases or words, and a search within that page follows which uses the same words, the highlight colors may not be as expected.  A work-around to this behavior is to turn off search highlighting (using the Options button on the Help file's toolbar) and reload the page by re-selecting it from the original global search results.