ShowTable of Contents
Introduction
You can use search to find documents, text in a document, applications, and people. You can also set search preferences for type of search query syntax and scope of search.
Types of Search
IBM Notes Client provides three different kind of Search options which you can use to find documents, text in a document, and people -
1. Quick Find: Type-Ahead & Ctrl+F
2. Search in View
3. Search Toolbar (also known as Search Center)
Quick Find (Type-Ahead)
Quick Find (Type-Ahead) is the most light-weight and fastest option to find any document in a particular View. Just type the initials in the View , it starts populating the results.
If you are searching for a
Name,
Type-ahead will help you quickly find that
Name and simultaneously it will sort the view by Name (Who) .
If you are searching for a Subject, change the scope from 'Find in' drop-down. Type-ahead will quickly sort the view by Subject and starts giving matching results from the Subject column.
Alternatively if you want Type-ahead to directly jump on the Subject column, keep sorting order of the view by Subject before invoking the Type-ahead.
Similarly, If you are searching for a Date, change the scope from 'Find in' drop-down. Type-ahead will quickly sort the view by Date and starts giving matching results from the Date column.
Alternatively if you want Type-ahead to directly jump on the Date column, keep sorting order of the view by Date. Type-ahead of numbers will help you in quickly find that Date.
Note: But if you are not typing the numbers, Type-ahead will jump to the Who(Name) column. That is, “Find In” will change to “Who” and search will begin to the “Who” column.
Quick Find(Type-ahead) limits its scope to only one column at a time, either from Name, Subject or Date and Type-ahead results depend on your current sorting order of mail view and typing.
Default Sorting Order is By | Quick Find will Sort & Find in Column |
If you are typing non-numeric | If you are typing Numbers |
Who (Name) | Who (Name) | Who (Name) |
Subject | Subject | Subject |
Date | Name | Date |
Relevance of 'Starts with' in Quick Find (Type-Ahead) - Type-ahead will find all the results having word\string starts with typed characters. E.g. Hitting 'mani' will give - Names whose first name start with 'Mani' and also the Names whose last name start with 'Mani'. See -
When to use Quick Find (Type-Ahead) - If you quickly want to find a document -
1. from \sent to a particular person or
name.
2. having some words\strings in the subject line.
3. of a particular date.
Quick Find (Ctrl + F)
Ctrl+F
is one step ahead from the Type-ahead and it finds in All Columns of the View. To use this feature, click
Ctrl + F and a dialog will appear, where you can choose 'Any column' to search in all columns. Also you can choose which column to search and continue typing the information you'd like to find.
More Options give options to find more exact match and defines how you want to traverse in a View. This is only available with Quick Find(Ctrl+F)
When to use Quick Find (Ctrl+F) - If you are in a View and quickly want to find the document(s) having some word\string in any column of the View.
Note : Quick Find (Type-Ahead & Ctrl +F) will not find results from the content\body of the document.
Search in View (View->Search this View)
'Search in View' is most extensive search in the Notes Application which allows you to search by any criteria within the database (body of document, with/out attachments or any other fields in the database). This is called a “Full text search”. This search will not only scan for the entered content within the body of the documents listed in the respective view, but also search inside of all listed documents as well as their attachments.
Preconditions - In order to ensure that all possible items are displayed in the search result, the database needs to have an active full text index. This means that the Index traffic light displayed in the upper right corner must be green 
. If the traffic light is red, the application index is not active and a full text search will not be carried out correctly.
However, indexing can be enabled or not on a database, by the user, depends on the organization policies.
Advanced Full Text Search -Within the full text search, you also have the option to use advanced search features. These features allow you, for example, to search within the first search results using another search term, to also include word variations or a fuzzy search that will enable the search mechanism to contain similar word combinations (e.g. user requirements -> user group requirements).
When to use Full Text Search - If you want to find a document -
1. containing some phrase, part of phrase, similar to the phrase in the body of email, attachments, to, from, subject, etc.
2. created\modified on, before, after, in-between, not in-between of any date.
3. created by, not by any Author(s).
4. where any of selected field (column) contain\does not contain any value\phrase.
5. where any of field (column)contain\does not contain set of multiple words.
Recommendations - If indexing is allowed on a DB, to get accurate search results, following are some recommendations to be followed.
1. Index attached files - if you want to search in attachments.
2. Index encrypted fields - if you want to search in encrypted fields.
3. Index sentence and paragraph breaks - if you want to search words in the same sentence or paragraph.
4. Enable case-sensitive searches - if you want to search for words by exact case match.
Note: A full-text index can be about 10-20% the size of the application itself (depending on how much text is in the application). Make sure you have the space before full-text indexing a very large application.
Search Toolbar (Search Center)
Search Toobar extends the scope out of a particular View and allows you to search in your All Mail files (including all views\folders ), All Calendars, All Contacts, etc.
You can also modify the Search Toolbar list by selecting File -> Preferences -> Search -> Search List.
Also you can add desired Application\DB in Search Toolbar List while opening it. Search Toolbar gives option to show it always in the list.
Archives & Search-results - Notes 9.0 and later edition allows you to simultaneously search your mail file and any mail archive applications you may have created. Archives can be reside either locally or at server also and in both cases they can be either created by Property or by Policy. Search results and Indexing options depend on where are they reside and how are they created.
1. Search toolbar gives search results from both Local & Server based archives (either created by property or by policy)
2. Auto-Indexing facility on “All Mail & Archives” -
2.1 Local archive either created by property or policy indexes
automatically after hitting first search query in 'All Mail and Archives'.
2.2 Auto-indexing does not work for server based Archive (either created by property or by policy). We have to make it Full-Text Indexed using 'Create Index' option.
3. In case search criteria meets more than 50 results, latest 50 results from each DB with sort by Date search criteria comes. If we have 3 DBs(Mail, Arch1 and Arch2), then maximum total search results will be 150.
If you want to find a document or person -
1. in All View\Folders of All Mails
2. in All Calendars
3. in All Contacts
4. in All Mail & Archives
5. Also you can find Applications\DBs using More Searches option.
References
About the Author
Ankur Yadav is associated with IBM for more than 5 years and works as a Quality Engineer in the IBM Notes Client project. You can reach him at ankyadav@in.ibm.com