Searching the knowledge base

Using Basic Search

Be sure that you:

1. Have selected the product that you have a question about. The relevancy and accuracy of your search results depend on product selection.

2. Use search terms that are as specific as possible. For example, if you are receiving an error message, rather than entering just "error," enter the error message exactly as it appears in the program into the Search field.

3. Use synonyms. If your search results do not contain what you are looking for or if you get too few results, try synonyms or variations on your original search terms. For example, if you first entered “determine,” try entering “identify” for your next search.

4. Correctly spell your search terms. A misspelled word can affect search results.

5. Work to limit the total length of the search request to 128 characters or a maximum of 10 words.

6. Remember that search is not case-sensitive, so capitalization will not affect your search results. For example, searching for "quickbooks" returns the same results as searching for "QuickBooks" or "Quickbooks."

7. Do not use punctuation marks or special characters (slashes, periods, colons, percentage signs, question marks, and so on) except for the hyphen, comma, and quotation marks.

Using Advanced Search

In addition to the guidelines for using Basic Search, you can narrow search results by using the following fields:

1. Find all results with all of the words—When you enter search terms in this field, the articles that result will contain all of the terms you list, without respect to word order.

2. With the exact phrase—This field enables you to search for terms in the order that you enter them without enclosing the phrase in quotation marks.

3. With at least one of the words—This field enables you to search for synonyms simultaneously, so that the results will contain at least one of the words that you specify.

4. Knowledge base article ID—If you know the KB ID of an article that you have referenced previously, you can enter that number in this field to access that specific article. However, KB IDs do occasionally change, so if no search results return, try using the appropriate search terms.

You can also:

1. Search for multiple keywords or phrases by separating each word or phrase by a comma. Search will find records that match each one of these words or phrases individually.

2. Combine words or terms in search by using Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT), which enable you to combine words in your search request.

3. Expand your search by using an * (asterisk) as a wildcard. For example, you can search for words that begin with the same letters by entering “acc*”. Asterisks can be used only at the end of single word or word fragment.