Property Search & Preview Search Syntax

In addition to the standard, free-text searches, Search & Preview also enables you, via the free-text input field, to search for specific document properties such as:

• Author: The name of the person who last modified the document
• Title: The document title
• Creation date: The date when the document was created
• Modified date: The date when the document was last modified
• Size: The document size (in bytes)
• URL: The document URL
• Status: The status of the document

• Custom: Your own special properties. Please see “The Searchable Properties Page” for instructions on how to make properties searchable
To specify these types of advanced searches, you must use the specific keywords and syntax rules described in the table below. When entering them into the search field, it will look something like this:

The usual rules apply when specifying property searches:

• To construct a complex query that includes several search words and properties, simply insert a space between each of them. You can also combine them with Boolean operators.

• If you want to search for a property value that includes a space, then you must surround the value in quotes, as with other types of phrase searches.

• Words not connected to a property name are standard search words, which are matched against the content of each document.

• You can use wildcards (*) and phrases (in quotes) when specifying values for your property searches. However, wildcards can only be used with the contains operator (:).

• If you use the equals operator (=), then only exact matches will be found; multi-word property values must include all words, in the right order, to find a match. For example, if the author of a document is “Kurt Vonnegut”, then the search “author=‘Kurt Vonnegut’” will find it, but “author=Vonnegut” will not. You cannot use the wildcard character with the equals operator.

• When you use the contains operator (:), then the specified value will be matched against each word of multi-word property values. Using the author example mentioned above, “author:Vonnegut” will find the document, while “author=Vonnegut” will not. When specifying word fragments, you must use the contains operator together with the wildcard. Again, with our author example, “author:Vonn” will not find the document, but “author:Vonn*” will find it.

• Relative operators, such as <, >, =< and =>, can only be used for numerical or date values, not with text values.
See the table below for a complete description of the property-search syntax supported by default. Note that you can also configure custom properties and make them searchable too; when you do this, you will also establish the name (and possibly alternative names) by which to specify each property in search strings (see “Introduction to Custom Properties” for details).