Searching keywords, labels, and status

[Mad Girl Disease]

When doing a project search, using the All and the Exact Phrase options, searching for the letters 'and' will return docs that contain sand, contraband, androgynous, and Trobriand.

But when searching for keywords, labels, and status, it seems to require that you entire either the entire term, or, in the case of up multi-word terms, at least one complete word. even when Exact Phrase is selected.

So if you have a keyword Androgynous Contraband, setting the search options for Keyword and Exact Phrase, searching for 'and' turns up nothing.

Exact Phrase seems to mean two different things depending on what data type is being searched.

When searching All, which includes document content, "exact phrase" means the appearance of that exact sequence of characters, no matter where in the word(s) they appear.

When searching keywords, labels, and status, "exact phrase" appears to mean something more like a combination of Any Word and Whole Word. It doesn't seem possible to search for these without typing at least one word in its entirety, regardless of the operator options selected.

With custom meta--data, a project search will bring back results based on the content/value in a meta data field, but it is not able to search by the title of the meta data field and show any docs in which that field has been used.

[narrsd]

Just a thought, MGD, as I was reading down through posts looking for new feature clues.

Usually in search, Exact Word or Exact Phrase mean just what they say: you have to have an exact match on a whole word or phrase (of words).

So if there's a bug here, I think it's that project search will find items based on fragments - really it should not with Exact Phrase.

Unless I misunderstand

Nice name, by the way, with also several possible interpretations...!

[narrsd]

actually I was just trying some searches, along with the great new Custom Metadata feature.

I think how Exact Phrase search works now is very, very useful, and should remain the default just as it is.

The reason, for me anyway, is that it will find a phrase (by word order) -- even if you don't remember the phrase perfectly.

Example: actual phrase is "something is lost", but default search on "something lost" will find it. And search on "lost something" won't, but will find it if you switch to All Words, so the bases are covered.

If a true Exact Phrase is needed, or indeed possible, it should be an additional Search Menu choice, I think. But we're not on Google, so an over-match result is not probably going to be a problem.

Maybe a nice way is just to re-name the default, top-of-menu search to "Match Phrase"?

Anyway, I really like what it does. More Scrivener really being for doing writing...

[MimeticMouton]

Thanks, MadGirlDisease, I've added this to the list. Exact Phrase should work to match the exact sequence of characters, regardless of whether they are the complete word (or span multiple words).

Clive, I wasn't able to reproduce your example where an "Exact Phrase" search for "something lost" matched "something is lost". That's a bug, and if you could give me steps to reproduce in a new blank project, I'd appreciate it. If this is only occurring for you in an older project, try using Tools > Save and Rebuild Search Indexes and then re-run the search to see if it still happens.

[narrsd]

Jennifer, sorry for the delay - didn't see your reply right away.

I looked into this, intending to send you a zip, but you're right - search Exact Phrase does do Exact Phrase after all.

I think I was probably confused by the found page remaining in view as I changed the search phrase -- but if you watch the Search Results scrivinings tags, you'll see it does disappear. Possibly a thought that the page ought to go out of the editor if it doesn't have a found result?

One other point I might mention - it's great to see the yellow highlighting on found search terms when they are in the text. I however had originally set up this test to find on Custom Meta-Data, from the Find All variant. In Meta-Data, the found term is not yellow highlighted, so you can easily miss that it's actually there. As I did, coming back a week later, for a while.

Thus, a vote for found text highlighing in Meta-Data

I guess the Inexact Phrase search is covered by All Words, isn't it...

Regards,
Clive

[Mad Girl Disease]

I know we are long out of the beta, but this is still not working correctly.