I’ve encountered what seems to be a very strange issue today. I was searching for the word “before” (it’s an important term in a matter I’m working on) in a particular document. It’s definitely there (it shows up in the concordance), but when I try to find the word, it says “No occurrences”.
I’ve now tried to search for the word “before” in my entire database (tens of thousands of files) and it also says “No items found”.
I haven’t noticed this with any other searches - everything else seems to be working just fine.
Any ideas why this might be happening?
It is being interpreted as a search operator – one of the powerful features of DEVONthink’s search. To actually search for the word “before”, you need to enclose it in quotation marks, e.g. "before". Or, if searching inside a document with the search inspector, you can uncheck the box Enable Operators & Wildcards.
The same goes for other operators like near, after, and, or and not. (There’s a full list in the manual or built-in Help under the heading Search operators).
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Ah - thank you! Very much appreciated.
You’re welcome 
Being aware of this for example let’s you do searches like "before" BEFORE today to exclude results like “[…] today. Now, before […]”. (just some contrived example)