Using dtSearch
This page provides a cheatsheet to using the dtSearch functionality that Relativity provides
Boolean Searcing
The syntax used for dtSearch follow rules that are used commonly in searching. The rules provided below are a basic guide of the searching and what it will return. All of the search words are case insensitive.
| dtSearch String | Returns Documents Containing |
|---|---|
| salt | The word salt - NB This will not return salts, see the * wildcard |
| "salt pepper" | The exact phrase salt pepper |
| salt AND pepper | The word salt and the word pepper |
| salt OR pepper | Either salt or pepper |
| salt w/5 pepper | Salt appears within five words of pepper |
| salt pre/5 pepper | Salt appears within five words before pepper |
| salt AND NOT pepper | Salt appears but pepper does not |
| NOT salt | Salt does not appear |
Operator Precedence
If you are searching with mmore than one keyword at a time using multiple OR, AND and NOT commands, you will need to use parentheses to make sure that the search returns the results that you want.
(salt AND pepper) OR mustard Would return documents that contain either mustard or salt and pepper together, whereas Salt AND (pepper OR mustard) Would return documents that contain salt and either pepper or mustard.
If a search is not returning items you expect it to, it could be because of a lack of parentheses in the search.
Wildcards
As well as basic search functions there are a range of more advanced functions that can help while searching. Some of these characters may cause a decrease in speed of the search due to the intensive checking it performs.
| Wildcard | Function | Example |
|---|---|---|
| * | A placeholder for zero or more characters | "App*" would return app, apple, apples, appetite, etc. |
| ? | A placeholder for any single character | "Appl?" would return apply, and apple, etc. |
| ~ | This returns grammatical variations of a word | "apply~" would return apply, applied, applies, etc. |
| % | This is used for fuzzy searching. It will match words that are a certain number of different characters from the search term | "app%ly" matches anything that starts with app and differs from apply by a single character. "a%%pply" matches anything that starts with a and differs from apply by two characters |
| xfirstword | A built in search term, marking the start of a file | "apple w/5 xfirstword" would return a document with apple within five words of the start of the document |
| xlastword | A built in search term, marking the end of a file | "apple w/5 xlastword" would return a document with apple within five words of the end of the document |
Regular expressions
You can use regular expressions within dtSearch, you just need to include the expression in double quotation marks and preceded with two hash symbols.
e.g. “##199[0-9]” would return 1990, 1991, … , 1999