Search Tips

To find information about a topic, simply type in a few keywords. The more detailed your query, the more relevant your results.

Our search engine also comes with some advanced capabilities -- like wildcards -- to help you find exactly what you're looking for. These capabilities are best shown with a few examples:

Translated: require share, require calendar

Finds "how to share your Calendar folder",  but not "calendar sharing"

Translated: require calendar (case insensitive), require words starting with "shar"

Finds "shared Calendar folder", "sharing a calendar", "to share your calendar".
The asterisk is a wildcard representing any four or fewer characters.

Translated: prefer NT (case sensitive), require fax

Finds "fax programs" and "Windows NT fax programs".
Documents with both terms appear higher in the list.

Translated: require the phrase "voice mail"

Finds "voice mail".
Does not find "voice-activated mail".

Translated: searches for the phrase "rules wizard" and "forward"

Finds "Rules Wizard actions to forward mail".
Does not find "custom actions for forwarding mail with the Rules Wizard".

Translated: forbid "Exchange Messaging Outlook", require free*

Finds "freeware" and "Free".
Excludes Exchange Messaging Outlook pages.

Translated: require Venus (case sensitive), require pictures, forbid planet, prefer images

First lists "pictures and images of Venus", then "Venus pictures".
Does not list lowercase "venus picture", nor forbidden "picture of planet Venus".

Translated: ignores common words like where, is, and the - requires words containing "frog"

Finds "frog", "frogleg", and "bullfrog".
To suppress the ignore feature, use quotes, as in "Where is the *frog*?".

Note on case sensitivity - only words or phrases containing an upper case character will be treated as case sensitive.  A search on "usa" will match "Usa", "USA", and "usA", while the term "USA" matches only its uppercase version.

The asterisk is a powerful search tool, but has some limitations. It cannot span words - that is, the query "powerfu*earch" would not match the first sentence of this paragraph - and it can represent at most four letters or numbers. To avoid overly broad searches, the asterisk can only be used in words or phrases which have at least three alpha-numeric characters. A search for "th*" would be ignored.