The Foundation Directory Online Help: Boolean Searching

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Boolean Searching

Boolean Searching lets you combine multiple search criteria in various ways, broadening or narrowing search results based on index entries and/or keywords you select. Boolean searching is a powerful tool, providing great flexibility in designing complex search strategies. However, this flexibility can also be confusing. Experimentation is the best way to ensure you get accurate results. To perform a search with more than one term per search field, you place a Boolean operator between each term.

There are three Boolean operators that can be incorporated into a search of The Foundation Directory Online. They are the words: AND, OR and NOT.

The OR operator. Placing OR between search terms broadens a search, retrieving all records containing either term.

An example using OR:

Place the cursor in the Fields of Interest search field on the Search Screen by clicking in it.
Type business OR human services.
Click Search.
All records containing either the word business or the words human services (or both) are displayed in the Search Results window.

Note: The OR operator is the default operator placed between terms when you select more than one from an index. You can replace OR by highlighting it, pressing Delete or Backspace and typing another operator in its place.

The AND operator. The AND operator between search terms narrows a search, retrieving only records containing both terms.

An example using AND:

Replace the OR operator from the prior example with the AND operator.
Your search term should now be business AND human services.
Click Search.
Only records containing both the words business and human services in the Fields of Interest part of the record are retrieved and displayed in the Search Results window. There will be fewer records retrieved than in the previous example.

The NOT operator. The NOT operator limits a search, retrieving only records containing the terms to the left of the NOT operator.

An example using NOT:

Place the cursor in the Fields of Interest search field by clicking in it.
Type business NOT human services.
Click Search.
Records containing the word business but not the words human services in the Fields of Interest part of the record are retrieved.

See Search Tutorial for more sample searches with Boolean Operators.