Searching for Key Words

ImageRight provides extraordinarily powerful document search features. You can search for documents (images) based on text that appears in an image, a file in its native format, file notes, folder notes, or an annotation. For example, you might search for all files that contain the name of a particular claimant in documents.

The basic idea behind a text search is to use key words to create a set of criteria that enables ImageRight to produce a list that includes the file (or files) you are looking for. When you use the search features, ImageRight searches through all records that match your key words in order to identify the records:

To which you have access rights.
That comply with the criteria you define.

In order to have an effective key word text search, you are encouraged to use specific searches when possible. Think of a key word search in ImageRight as if you were searching the Internet; the more specific you are, the more relevant the results of your search, and the easier it will be to identify the results that matter.

For the most part, the entry of additional search criteria other than key words as explained later is optional. However, we suggest that you enter all the known criteria to narrow your search, which will help improve system response time, as explained in Searching for Files.

In our example, we are going to search for a specific key word. In separate topics, we explain how to define additional search criteria, print the search results, and the options in the File Open dialog box in more detail. For more information, click the Related Topics button below and visit the other topics.

On the ImageRight ribbon, click Open File. As an alternative, you may right-click the title bar in the ImageRight navigation pane, and then click Open File.

Click the Search tab in the File Open dialog box if it is not already displayed, and then select Page in the Look for list.
Enter the criteria for your search as explained in Searching for Files, as needed.
Enter the text that you want to use as your search criteria in the Search key words box (vehicle in our example).
Click the Find Now button.
A list of files matching your criteria will be displayed.

The key words you used in your search are highlighted in the images. Key words are not highlighted in files that are in their native forma, for example, Microsoft Word Processing documents (files with the .doc, .docm, or .docx extension).

Key Word Search Requests

These general rules will be helpful in defining your searches.

Key word text search is case insensitive.
Search for a specific word by entering the word only, for example, policy.
Search for a specific phrase using a combination of words, for example, cancelled insurance policy (quotation marks are not necessary).

And, Or, Not

You can search for the presence of multiple words or phrases by separating the words/phrases with the words and, or, and not.

Use and when looking for pages with both or all words on them.
Use or when searching for at least one of the words or phrases.
Use and not to exclude pages from the search.

Examples

Search Request	Page Must Have
commercial policy and office	Both commercial policy and office present
commercial policy or office	Either commercial office or policy present
commercial policy and not office	Commercial policy present but cannot have office present on the same page

Wildcard Characters

A search word can contain wildcard characters *, ?, or =.

The * matches any number of characters.
A ? in a word or number matches any single character.
The = matches any single digit.

Examples

Search Request	Would Match
cancel*	cancels, cancellation, cancelled, etc.
pens	compensation, expensive, etc.
injur?	injury, injure, but not injured or injuries
ap*ed	applied, approved, etc.
pol===	pol123 but not pol1234 or policy

W/N Connector

Use the W/N connector to specify that one word or phrase must occur within the proximity of another word.

Examples

Search Request	Would Match Pages that Contain
accident w/5 walking	Accident within 5 words of walking
accident w/10 bus	Accident within 10 words of bus

Alternatively, you can use the W/N connector with not to exclude pages in which one word is not close to the other.

Example

Search Request	Would Match Pages
Joe claims not w/5 fraud	In which Joe claims is not within 5 words of fraud

You can use W/N xfirstword or W/N xlastword to limit your search to the beginning or end of a page.

Examples

Search Request	Would Match Pages that Contain
final notice of cancellation w/15 xfirstword	Contain final notice of cancellation within the first 15 words of the page
form mcs-90 w10 xlastword	Contain 90 within the last 10 words of the page

Fuzzy Search

Use fuzzy searching to find text that may contain typographical errors or text that has been scanned using optical character recognition (OCR). Use the % wildcard character to represent a single character for fuzzy searching. The number of % characters determines the number of differences that will be ignored when searching for a word. The position of the % characters determines how many letters at the start of a word have to match exactly.

Examples

Search Request	Would Match Words Beginning With
g%uarantee fund	g and at most one letter different
g%%uarantee fund	g and at most two different letters

Stemming

Stemming extends a search to cover grammatical variations of a word. For example, a search for apply would also find applying, applies, and applied. To add stemming to your search, add a ~ (tilde character) at the end of the word you want stemmed, for example, apply~.

The stemming rules that govern searching for grammatical variations are designed to work with the English language. The rules are contained in the Stemming.dat file. To modify the rules or implement stemming for a different language, you must modify Stemming.dat.

It is outside the scope of this document to explain the steps for changing Stemming.dat. If you require more information, please contact your ImageRight system administrator.