Using the Basic Search to Locate Notebook Data

  • Updated

One of the core benefits of using LabArchives is the ability to quickly locate important data stored in your notebooks. The powerful search functionality allows users to search not only text entries but also the content of many file types, including Microsoft Office documents, PDFs, and other text-based files. All of these are indexed to ensure rapid retrieval. 

By default, the LabArchives Basic Search will search the currently open notebook and across all of the indexed fields. You can perform a search using a single word, a phrase, or more complex expressions using Boolean operators like AND, OR, and NOT, as well as quoted searches. 

To perform a targeted search that allows you to select specific notebooks, search across all notebooks, or search within specific indexed fields, click the down arrow to open the Advanced Search menu. View the Advanced Search article for additional information. 

Basic_Search_bar_location.png

A count of matching results appear in the Search Results folder on the left. Each listed notebook shows the number of hits found. Click a notebook to view its results—matching terms will be highlighted whenever possible.

basic_search_search_results.png

Results are displayed 25 per page. By default, entries are sorted by Relevancy, based on how often and where the search terms appear. To change how results are sorted, use the Sort By menu at the top of the results. You can sort by Newest to Oldest, Oldest to Newest, User A–Z, or User Z–A. Use the page navigation links to move between results or jump to the beginning or end.

Advanced-Search-Results-Sort.png
Tips for Formatting You Search

Here are some tips to help you build and refine your searches:

Stemming

LabArchives also applies stemming, meaning it automatically expands a search term to include words that share the same root. For instance, searching for:

Flow

Will return results that include "Flow," "Flower," and "Flowers."
To search only for the exact word, use quotation marks around the search term. 

Exact Phrase Searching

To search for an exact phrase, enclose your terms in quotation marks. For example:

  • "Flow Cytometer"returns entries containing that exact phrase.
  • "Flow" will return only the exact word "Flow", and not related words like "Flower".

This is especially useful when you want to avoid stemming.

Avoid using stop words (e.g., "a", "and", "do") in quoted searches, as they can lead to unexpected results.

Boolean Operators

Boolean operators allow you to refine your search by combining or excluding terms.  For example: 

  • AND – mouse AND enu returns entries containing both terms.
  • OR –  mouse OR enu returns entries containing either term
  • NOT – mouse NOT enu returns entries containing "mouse" but excluding any that also contain "enu".

You can also combine operators to create more complex searches:

mouse AND enu NOT mutant

This will return entries that include both "mouse" and "enu", but not "mutant."

Boolean operators are applied left to right; LabArchives does not prioritize operator precedence.

Relevance Ranking

After executing a basic search, LabArchives returns entries containing any of your search terms, ranked by relevance. Relevance is determined by how frequently the terms appear in each entry (those with more occurrences of the search term(s) will appear at the top at higher than those that appear less).