Searching for documents using logical operators

How you can refine your search in SingleCase

Pavel Krkoška avatar
Written by Pavel Krkoška
Updated over a week ago

SingleCase supports searching by so-called logical operators, which you can use to refine your search results.

How search without operators works

If you don't use operators, the search works similarly to what you are used to on Google. If you search for sale contract, SingleCase will return results that are called sale contract first, followed by those that have that phrase in the text, and finally those that have the words sale and contract in them, but not consecutively.

The actual ranking of the retrieved documents depends on several parameters - we take into account the number of occurrences of the search words, their proximity to each other and their position in the document. To narrow down your search results, you can use the client, project, author or label filter in the advanced search.

Search with logical operators

Operators help you further refine your search results if there are too many results, or if you are looking for a specific document. For example, you can limit your search results to documents that contain an exact phrase, or exclude results for documents containing a specific word.

The table below lists all enabled search operators than can be used with Singlecase:

Operátor

Příklad

|

contract | agreement

Returns documents containing at least one of the words contract, agreement

!

contract !purchase

Returns documents that contain the contract but do not contain the purchase

""

"purchas contract"

Returns documents that contain the exact phrase purchase contract

*

invoic*

Returns documents that contain a word with any ending (invoice, invoicing, invoiced...) *

()

(purchase contract) | (buying contract)

Returns documents that contain both a purchase and a contract, or both a buying and a purchase - thus used for grouping

* at least 3 letters must precede the question mark or asterisk

Examples of more complex searches for connoisseurs

  • contract | purchase | stock - returns all documents with at least one of the words

  • buying contract| work| invoic* - similar to the previous one, but also return documents containing words such as invoiced or invoicing

  • (contract | agreement) (transaction | transfer) - returns all documents that match the combination of the word in the first bracket with the word in the second bracket (transaction agreement, transfer agreement, transaction agreement, transfer agreement)

  • (cat !mouse) | (cat !bear) - returns all documents where there is a cat without a mouse or a cat without a bear (i.e. there cannot be a mouse and a bear together)

  • !contract - beware, this purely negative definition (all documents that do not contain the word contract) is not independently searchable

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