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Searching for a Phrase
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8-Sep-2014 1:18pm

I am trying to do a search for all posts that include the phrase "personal holding company". I am using Advanced Search and entering "personal holding company" (with the quotation marks) into the search field. I am getting too many results. The results are showing discussions that have each of those words, but not as a phrase.

8-Sep-2014 6:27pm

I think it's working as designed - if I go to the Advanced Search link and put in personal holding company (without the quotes) it is returning only posts with that exact phrase at the top of the results.

Then it does go on to show the other posts that only contain one or two of those words. I believe it is using a nearness-affinity algorithm so that the closer those words are together in the order you specified them, those posts will sort to the top of the results.

8-Sep-2014 7:07pm

The quote marks don't matter. I can reproduce Chris reported result either with or without. You have to check the correct option, "all words" rather than 'any words".

9-Sep-2014 8:53am

Sorry. I feel like an idiot. I cannot get the same results. I have now tried the search without the quotes. Here are my settings using the Advanced Search:

keywords: personal holding company
author: blank
forums: Taxation
subforums: Yes
within: Post subjects and message text
display: Topics
sort: Post time / Descending
limit: All results
return: 300

The first result I get is:
"Depreciating capital improvement on historic building "
by HowardS » 7-Sep-2014 3:44am in Taxation

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=977&hilit=personal+holding+company
This discussion does not include the phrase. In fact, it only includes the word "holding".

9-Sep-2014 5:43pm

Nope, you are smart...when doing it the way you did, I see the same issue. I just deleted the database search index and recreated it. I think it is better now - give it a try and let me know if you see different/better results now.

9-Sep-2014 5:47pm

Yes. Thank you. That worked better. I only got 3 results this time. Each result included those words. However, only the 1st result included those words as a phrase. The other 2 results included the words, but not as a phrase.

Is doing a search just for a phrase not possible?

9-Sep-2014 5:57pm

See my first response in this thread...I do not think so, it will always try to be 'helpful' and add keyword related results below the full phrase results. Not sure how much if a problem that causes, but very unlikely I can easily change that behavior.

9-Sep-2014 6:00pm

Chris, Thank you for the follow up.

9-Sep-2014 6:51pm

Wiles wrote:Yes. Thank you. That worked better. I only got 3 results this time. Each result included those words. However, only the 1st result included those words as a phrase. The other 2 results included the words, but not as a phrase.

Is doing a search just for a phrase not possible?

You found only two posts (one topic) with that phrase in the Taxation forum probably because that's all there is. Both of them are related to your thread on 9/8 about installment sale. Why do you think you should be finding more?

9-Sep-2014 6:56pm

It's not that I thought I should be finding more. I was just wondering why I found the 2 additional topics that did not include that phrase. In other words, I was wondering how to limit the search results to instances that ONLY included the phrase. If I am doing a search for "personal holding company", then I really don't care to find topics that that happen to include each of those words, but not as a phrase.

Not a big deal now, as this forum is young. But fast forward 7 years and searching for just a phrase or a set of phrases may be more important. But, as Chris points out, the results will be sorted so that the topics with the phrase will list first.

15-Jan-2015 8:01am

Chris, I think the search database index needs to be deleted and rebuilt again. I just did a search that failed to produce correct results.

15-Jan-2015 12:08pm

PM me or tell me the search you attempted...thx...

15-Jan-2015 12:37pm

Chris, never mind. I figured out my problem. I was using my name, Wiles, in the keyword field assuming it would include all discussions that I participated in. I needed to put my name in the author field, below that.

BTW, when I put my name in the author field it only includes discussions that I initiated. Correct? How can I search through all discussions that I participated in?

15-Jan-2015 1:19pm

Thanks for clarifying that. Sure - if you are logged in and you click on your own name (over on the left side of the post box <---) you will be brought to your profile overview screen. In the lower right hand side of that scree is a link called "search user's posts".

Click that and it will show you every post that you have made. As an extra nicety once you are on that screen of results you can search within those results for key words.

15-Jan-2015 1:32pm

Great info. Thank you.

If searching within results is there any way to get the results screen to show by Topic instead of by Post. Probably not.

Here is an example: Let's say I want to do a search of all discussions that had to do with "estate expenses" that I participated in. And I would like the results to show by Topic. Is this possible?

15-Jan-2015 1:58pm

I totally forgot about an even more obvious way to do this which I think will meet your requirements. Look up at the top of the screen where it says "User Control Panel", and next to that "view your posts".

Click that "view your posts" link, which shows a list of topics you have posted within (or authored). On that results page there is also a "search within" feature, where you could put the words 'estate expenses' in -- and it will filter down to only those topics.

15-Jan-2015 2:06pm

That's perfect!!! Thank you for being awesome!

I wish you would work at Lacerte.

15-Jan-2015 2:15pm

:-) thanks. I can't claim credit for designing or writing that functionality though - it comes in the base software we use for this board...nonetheless it is kind of awesome :-)

13-Mar-2015 5:19pm

I couldn't find the more recent thread where searches came up (the one about the problem searching for "1099-R"), but here is another problem: I tried searching for "H&R" and it doesn't work, the ampersand is treated as a space. Isn't there a quote or an escape character available for searches?

13-Mar-2015 7:47pm

ok - I was sufficiently remorseful about the issues with the forum organic search facility that I integrated Google custom search into the site. Go to "advanced search" and you will see that there are now two search engine options, Google and the built-in search.

Not surprisingly, the Google engine is pretty good. Sorry for the ads it serves up but that's what you get with the free version.

Let me know if you see anything odd/weird/strange about the way the search page works now, I had to touch a lot of the code.
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