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Search in Experience Space

You can use a variety of search techniques to empower your search capabilities and fine tune the results.

Basic search behavior

Search for text entered alone and without any special characters or operators gives matches for items that contain all search terms, which can appear in any order. For example, if you search for car park, you will get matches for items that contain both 'car' and 'park', in any order and with any number of words in between.

Regarding the overall scope of the search, it is important to understand the following points:
  • The scope of each search is within your current context (such as a folder, structure group, or publication) plus all subfolders. If you want to a search the entire system, that is, across all Publications, then select the Publications node in the navigation tree.
  • Each search looks only at the last major version of each item. This means that if you change an item in a way that should impact search results, then you must check in the item before the change will actually affect the search. It also means that, if an item has been saved but does not yet have a major version, then it will also not be returned in the search results.

Search for an item by URI

You can quickly locate a specific Content Manager item by searching for its item URI. You simply enter the URI in the regular Search box. For regular Content Manager items, the URI is also known as a TCM URI, and always include a tcm prefix followed by combination of numbers, for example: tcm:4-305.

Note that unlike other search methods, searching by URI does not filter the search results based on your current location. It will locate a matching item wherever it is located in Content Manager, even in a different publication.

Search for external items

Content Manager can be integrated with one or more external systems to provide access to multimedia assets and data assets stored in those systems. If the integration with a particular external system supports the ability to search, then the Search option will be available so that you can search for assets in that system.

In the same way you can locate regular content items by the TCM URI, you can also locate the external items using their Content Manager URIs. The URI for an external item is known as an ECL URI (ECL stands for External Content Library) and includes ecl as the prefix instead of tcm.

When searching for external items, you must start the search from no higher in the Blueprint than the Mount Point (top-level folder) of a specific external system. This is a limitation that may be removed in a future release.

Advanced search options

For Content Manager items, you can use a number of advanced search methods to refine your search results.

Search for exact phrases

If you want to you search for an exact phrase, simply enclose the phrase in quotes (specifically "double quotes"). For example, to search for items that contain the exact phrase "press release", enter "press release". This will match "More information in our latest press release", as it is an exact match. It will not, however, match the content "We will initially release the product to the press". In the second instance, both words are present but not as an exact matching string. Without the quotes, you will receive both results as matches.

Expand or narrow search with logical operators

You can use logical operators to expand or narrow the scope of your search. Alternatively, you can use symbols instead of the operator terms.

The following table describes the search operator terms, symbols and usage:

OperatorSymbolFunctionExample
AND&&Searches for items containing both the search terms. If no operator is used between words, AND is assumed.tortellini AND guacamole returns items containing both the words 'tortellini' and 'guacamole', in any order and with any words in between.
OR||Searches for items containing either (or both) of the search terms.car OR park returns items containing the words 'car' or 'park'.
NOT!Searches for items containing the search terms before the operator but not the search terms after the operator.pizza NOT pasta returns items containing the words 'pizza' but not 'pasta'.
Use special characters as wildcards

You can use the following special characters as wildcards. The following table describes the most commonly used special characters:

CharacterFunctionExamples
*Searches for items that contain the entered text, allowing for any number of characters to replace the asterisk (*) wildcard.

You can use the * in any position in your search string—beginning, middle or end.

Searching on the * alone will return all indexed items in the current context.

sky* matches 'skyscraper' and 'skydiver'

*sky matches 'husky' and 'pesky'

*sky* matches all four of the preceding examples

hu*y matches 'husky', 'hurry' and 'hungry'

?Searches for items that contain the entered text, allowing one character to replace the ? wildcard?an matches 'ran', 'pan' and 'ban'

pan? matches 'pane', 'pans' and 'pant'

pan? would not, however, match 'panic' or 'pancreas'

Limit search by proximity of terms

When searching for multiple terms, you can limit the distance the terms are from each other. The results will include items that contain all of the words in the search string, but only if they are located within the specified proximity.

CharacterFunctionExample
~Searches for items that contain the matching characters within a maximum proximity.

Add the tilde character (~) and a numeric value to the end of the search string, as follows:

"<SEARCH STRING>" ~N
Where:
  • SEARCH STRING is the text you are looking for enclosed in quotation marks.
  • N is the maximum number of words that can separate the search terms.
"news index"~4 matches items containing both the words, in any order, but with a maximum of four words between them
Search within a named field or property

A powerful way to refine search is by limiting the scope to specific fields that may be present in version Tridion Sites items. There are two complimentary methods that support field-specific search. The first method uses the IN operator and works with content and metadata fields. The second method uses the : (colon) symbol and works with standard Tridion Sites properties.

The following table describes how to use these two search methods:

MethodFunctionExamples
INSearches for items that have a search string in a specified content or metadata field.

This method uses the IN operator as follows:

<SEARCH STRING> IN <XML_FIELD_NAME>

You can also use the IN operator in combination with the * and ? wildcard characters.

car IN SampleContentField matches items containing the word car in the content field named SampleContentField.

ca* IN SampleMetadataField matches items containing 'car', 'cart' and 'call' in the metadata field named SampleMetadataField.

: (colon)Searches for items that have a search string in a specified field, but this time the fields are standard Tridion Sites properties.

This method uses the colon (:) symbol and the following format:

<PROPERTY_NAME>:<SEARCH STRING>
Where PROPERTY_NAME is one of the following:
  • Title — Search looks for matches in the Name property of items.
  • Description — Search looks for matches in the Description property of items.

Be sure to use the exact capitalization of the field names.

Title:New* matches all items that begin with 'New', such as 'New Schema', 'New Component' and' New Bundle'.

Description:Page matches all items where the word 'Page' appears somewhere in the Description field.

Escape special characters and reserved words

The Content Manager views a number of special characters as separators and not as part of a word. Along with numbers, the following characters have special meanings:

+ - ! ( ) { } [ ] ^ " ~ * ? : \

To search for a string that contains one of these characters, precede each character with a backslash (\). For example, to search for the string (1+1):2, you can enter the following in the search field:

\(1\+1\)\:2

If the character is part of a phrase or term, enclose the search text in double quotes.

In addition to special characters, you need to place a backslash in front of the following reserved words (regardless of their capitalization):

  • CONTAINS
  • NEAR
  • SENTENCE
  • PARAGRAPH
  • PHRASE
  • IN
  • MATCHES
  • STARTS
  • SUBSTRING
  • ENDS
  • AND
  • OR
  • NOT