Sample Tips For Searching iManage Using IDOL
Back in the old days I used to search for cap (without quotes) to find documents such as capitalization tables. How do I do that in the new search?
A search forcap by itself will return all documents with that word in the title. It won't return documents with capitalor capitalization. You can expand your search to include these words by enteringcap*as your search criteria. This search will return all documents with words beginning with cap in the title, such as cap, capitalorcapitalization.The wildcard (*) is used to represent any number of charactersin the same word. But, be careful. A wildcard search like cap* can take awhile and produce fartoo many hits. A better approach would be tosearch for cap*tablewhich will narrow the results toonly documents with words beginning withcapandthe word table in the title.
When I save my monthly reports I always include the date in the titleas mm/dd/yy, such as 01/09/10 Status Report. Now when I try to find a particular report, I get tons of hits that I have to wade through before I can find the document I need. Is there any way to fix this?
Yes.Enclose the date in quotes. A title search for 01/09/10 without quotes is really a search for documents with 01 or 09 or10 in the title. A search for "01/09/10" will return documents with 01/09/10 as well as documents with 01.09.10, 01-09-10or 01 09 10. It's probably also a good idea to narrow the search by Author to further reduce the depth of your wading.
I just had a really odd thing happen. I'm searching for documents with the word "Revised" in the title, and I get lots of documents with the word "Revision" in the title. How on earth did that happen?
This is the result of "stemming." The IDOL search engine looks at the word you're searching for and determines its root -- in this case, revise. Then it includes in the search results documents with any variation of that root word.Toavoid stemming, put the search term in quotes. Then a search for"revised" will onlyreturn documents with revised in the title.
I'm searching for a document titled The Way They Were and lots of documents are coming up but not the one I'm looking for. What's up with that?
"The", "they", and "were" are all Stop-Words. Considered to be too common to be useful in a search, stop-words are ignored by the search engine. This turns your search into one looking for just the word "way". Your document may be in there as well or it may be that the limit for the number of documents to show in a results list is leaving yours behind. Refine the search using other fields. And review the attached stop-word list for words to avoid in the future.
I need to find a Form 10-K prepared for my client but a search for 10-K seems to bring up everything except what I'm looking for. Help!
If you have to search by the form number, eliminate the hyphen. IDOL ignores the hyphen (a "special character") and sees the 10 and the k as two separate search terms. A search for 10-k (with the hyphen) in the Title field will find documents with the number 10 and the letter k (by itself) in the title. A search for 10k (without the hyphen) will bring up documents with 10-K and 10K in the title. The same is true for S-1, F-2 and other similarly hyphenated terms. Fora more refinedresult, narrow the search by using the Client, Author, or Create/Edit date fields.
I just saved a document but it doesn't come up when I search for it. Where did it go?
It can take up to 5 minutes for a new document to be indexed and available to the search engine. Until it's indexed, you won't find it using a full text search or a search of the Title field. Try again in a few minutes or use the Created By and/or the Created Date Range field to find it.
I had to changethe title of my document and now it doesn't come up when I search for it. How can I find it?
Wait 15 minutes and try again. The title field is an indexed field and subject to the same waiting period for any changes to be found by a search. If it's been more than 15 minutes, try searching using one of the profile fields (Author, Client, etc.) and then confirm that the title is what you thought it was. If it is, notify User Support, including the document number and how you searched the title field. There may be a problem with the index of that title that only the database techs can root out.