Why can't I find a simple word.

DEVONthink Tips
1

In one of my DTP databases I have a rich text document titled “Two taxes per line item.” The document does not contain any text. When trying to search for the document entering the word “tax” - Devon would not find it. I tried Wildcards, Fuzzy, Spelling all those things and Devon could not find it.

I downloaded a trial version of Mori to do a comparison. I loaded Mori with the same docs that are in my Devon database and entered “tax*” into Mori’s search bar. Not surprisingly it found the doc easily.

This is not the first time that I’ve run into this problem in Devon - where I am looking for a word and as in this case “tax” as opposed to “taxes” as it’s been entered into the database and I can’t find it. However when I found the document manually and I entered “taxe” into the search window and pressed the “Spelling” it found my document just fine.

What’s the story?

Lou

2

Hi, Lou. If you wish to find, e.g. tax, taxes, taxed use the Phrase operator and search for “tax”.

Also note that wildcards will work in a Name search (and only for a Name search).

3

Thanks! Is that the best way to vague searches?

-Lou

4

Not necessarily.

But you want to do a “stem” search for a string with multiple possible ‘endings’, and the Phrase operator will do that. As noted, the Wildcard operators will do that, but only on Names, not on text in the body of a document.