Why does the Knowledge Base ignore some of my search terms, and how can I get them back in my search?

Since many common English words (for example, of, if, but, for, the, because) appear in many Knowledge Base documents, such words can significantly slow your search and rarely contribute to its effectiveness. Thus, the Knowledge Base ignores some common words in searches. For more information, see In Knowledge Base searches, are some words ignored?

In addition, the Knowledge Base treats many punctuation marks as white space and does not consider them as part of your search.

To include such regularly ignored words in your search, enclose each of the words in double quotes. This will produce exact matches of words or phrases included in the double quotes, including any punctuation marks, uppercase or lowercase letters, and spaces. For example, suppose you search for:

Your search results will include only Knowledge Base documents that contain the word time, because the other two terms are ignored. To force inclusion of all three terms, you should instead search for:

Your search results will include every document that contains all three terms, regardless of their order.

If, however, you want to search for only the Knowledge Base documents that contain those three words as a phrase, enclose them as a group in double quotes, as follows:

Also see:

• How does the Knowledge Base work?
• In Knowledge Base searches, should I use quotation marks?
• In Knowledge Base searches, are some words ignored?
• How do I use the Knowledge Base?
• How can I search the Knowledge Base on C, X, or STEPS?