Tips for the Full Text Search

By default, searches are performed on complete words and not portions of a word. For example, a search for the word "in", would list all company names containing "in" as a complete word. However, such a search would not list entries where "in" is contained as a portion of a word (i.e., "India"). If you would like to search for portions of a word, you must preface the search expression with the "$" wildcard symbol. In this case, a search for "$in" would also find "India".

Searches containing multiple search criterion can be performed by making use of the boolean operators "and", "or" and "not". You may also substitute a plus sign for "and", as well as a minus sign for "not". For example, entering "africa not nigeria" (or "africa -nigeria), would generate a list displaying all entries containing the word "africa", but not the word "nigeria". Entering "and africa and nigeria and oil" (or "+africa +nigeria +oil"), would only find entries containing all three words. The "or" operator is the standard default, which means "afrika nigeria" and "or africa or nigeria" are identical and would return all entries containing at least one of the two words.

The use of just one capital letter in the search criterion, will prompt the query to take capitilization into consideration. As a result, a search for "Lagos" would list all entries containing the word in exactly this format, that is, with the first letter capatilized. However, entering "lagos", would return "Lagos", "LAGOS" and, of course, "lagos".

In order to search for multiple words in a particular order, you must place quotation marks around the expression. A search for "Sierra Leone" (quotation marks have to be used in this case) returns all entries where the text "Sierra Leone" appears in sequence. Excluded are entries where "Sierra" and "Leone" appear in a different sequence.