Search: Advanced Operators

Applies To

LexWorkplace Starter, Core, Advanced

With LexWorkplace Search, you can use familiar search operators, such as AND, OR, and NOT to perform more precise, surgical searches across your matters, documents, and email.

In case you missed it, introduction to LexWorkplace Search is covered in the article:  Search: 101.

Here’s a quick guide (with examples) to help you get the most out of LexWorkplace search.

How to Use Advanced Search Operators

Operators in Caps

When typing operators such as AND, OR, and NOT, the operator must be in all-caps for LexWorkplace to interpret this as a search operator.

1. Operators: AND, OR, NOT

• AND: Narrows your search to include results that match all the specified terms.

  • Example: apple AND orange will return documents that contain both "apple" and "orange.”

• OR: Broadens your search to include results that match any of the specified terms.

  • Example: apple OR orange will return documents that contain either "apple" or "orange" (or both).

• NOT: Excludes results that match a specified term.

  • Example: apple NOT orange will return documents that contain "apple" but not "orange.”

2. Parentheses Grouping

• Use parentheses to group terms and operators to control how the query is processed.

• Example: banana AND (apple OR orange) will return documents that contain "banana" and either "apple" or "orange."

3. Proximity Matches

• You can search for terms within a certain distance from each other by specifying the number of words that separate them.

• Example: "apple orange"~5 will return documents where "apple" and "orange" appear within 5 words of each other.

4. Wildcards: * and ?

• *: Matches zero or more characters in a word.

  • Example: appl* will match "apple", "apples", "application", etc.

• ?: Matches a single character in a word.

  • Example: appl? will match "apple" or "apply", but not "apples."

Caveats

• It is not currently possible to consider both document contents AND the filename in the same Boolean query. For instance, docx AND "John Smith" will not return a .docx (this is in the filename) with "John Smith" in the contents.