Primafact’s advanced search options can use Boolean logic to find documents by searching through the document’s text, titles, annotations, and profile fields.
Boolean searches allow you to combine words and phrases using the words AND, OR, NOT, and NEAR (Boolean operators) to limit, widen, or define your search. The term Boolean is derived from the 19th century British mathematician George Boole who developed Boolean logic to combine and/or exclude certain concepts when searching documents.
The following are tips on how to effectively use Boolean searches within Primafact.
- Click on the SEARCH tab in Primafact.
- On the far left, you will see the Boolean search options.
| BooleanSearch WordsResult | ||
|---|---|---|
| ALL | excessive speed | Finds all documents that contain both words “excessive” and “speed” even if they are not side by side or in that order |
| ALL | “excessive speed” | Only finds documents that contain the exact phrase “excessive speed” |
| AND | excessive speed AND intoxicated | Only finds documents that contain both the phrase “excessive speed” and the word “intoxicated” |
| AND NOT | excessive speed AND NOT intoxicated | Only finds documents that contain the phrase “excessive speed” but do not contain the word “intoxicated” |
| OR | intoxicated OR inebriated |
|
| NEAR | intoxicated NEAR speed | Finds all documents that contain the word “intoxicated” near the word “speed” based on how close they are to each other. You select how close or far apart the two words or phrases are by adjusting the word counter |
You can also use the wild cards * and ? to help if you are unsure of a word’s spelling. For instance, you could search for “pro?a?” if you weren’t sure whether the medication is spelled PROZAK or PROSAC. Or, if you wanted to look for many variations of a word, you could search for “prescr*” and it would return results for the words “prescribe,” “prescribed,” “prescription,” and “prescriptions”.
You can also choose where Primafact should search – all folders in Primafact, just the current folder, annotations and/or profile fields – by selecting the folder option on the top right of the search window. This is really handy for when you close the original document in a case file and are viewing other documents. You can then sort the search results by title, location, date added, document date, page count, or hits count.
For more information about Primafact's Document Management Software for Litigators, please contact Sales at 1-877-726-3228 (Canada Toll Free), 1-877-873-0592 (USA Toll Free) or send us a message.
