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Knowledge Base search help

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Quick help

Following is a quick reference of searching tips and examples:

Searching tips:
  • Use more than one word
  • Use only important words
Good examples:
  • configure vpn windows xp
  • microsoft exchange forward email
  • locate email address
Bad examples:
  • email (Too general; will return hundreds of documents)
  • How do I locate my cousin's email address at Cornell? (Too specific; too many words)
  • analysis of social change (Not related to computing or Indiana University)

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Search function

Basics of searching

To search the Indiana University Knowledge Base, enter your search terms in the search box that appears on every Knowledge Base page. Separate multiple terms with spaces. For example, if you want help configuring a VPN connection on your Macintosh, you could enter the terms configure vpn macintosh . When you've finished entering search words, click the Search button, or simply press Enter while your cursor is still in the text box.

The Knowledge Base search engine looks through the full text of all Knowledge Base documents, and returns the documents containing all your search words. For example, the above search would return only documents containing all of the words "configure", "vpn", and "macintosh", but no documents containing only one or two of the terms.

The search results page presents you with a list of documents that contain your search terms. If there are more documents than fit on the page, you can see them by selecting Next. Documents are ranked according to how often and how prominently your search terms appear in the text.

At the top of the search results page, you'll see how many total documents your search found. For example, you may see "Showing documents 1 - 15 out of 72 documents". If the total number of returns seems too large, you can narrow your search. It may take a few tries for you to find the combination of search terms that will return the answer to your specific question.

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Effective Knowledge Base searches

  • Don't search on a single, general word, but rather choose at least two or three words that apply to your question. For example, include the software name, the system, and the task you want to perform.

  • The Knowledge Base doesn't allow partial word or truncated term searches.

  • You don't have to search on plural word forms that end in  s  or  es ; the singular form will return singular and plural forms of the word.

  • Single characters (except for numbers and some common computing terms such as "C" and "X") and many common words are ignored. For more information, see In Knowledge Base searches, are some words ignored?

  • Punctuation marks are treated as spaces, except for  &  (the ampersand character),  >  (the greater-than character),  <  (the less-than character),  !  (the exclamation point), and periods within numbers.

  • Searches are not case sensitive unless you enclose each term in double quotes, e.g., "Windows" and "XP". You can also use double quotes to search for exact phrases, e.g., "Windows XP". For more information, see In Knowledge Base searches, should I use quotation marks?

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Menu view

The Knowledge Base menus are a collection of popular, introductory Knowledge Base documents organized by topic. The menus are a good starting place to familiarize yourself with the Knowledge Base.

To access the menus from the search page, from the menu bar beneath the Indiana University Knowledge Base logo, click Menus. To access the menus directly, click here. For more information about the menus, see Help with the KB menu interface.

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Glossary view

The Knowledge Base glossary view is a listing of Knowledge Base documents that define common computing terms. It is a small selection of texts arranged alphabetically by term, but you can quickly jump to a specific term by selecting its first letter from the index at the beginning of the glossary.

To access the glossary from the search page, from the menu bar beneath the Indiana University Knowledge Base logo, click Glossary. To access the glossary directly, click here. For more information about the glossary, see the Glossary help.

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Including archived documents in your Knowledge Base search

When Knowledge Base documents reach the end of their life span for whatever reason, they are assigned to the category "archived". Archived documents will appear with "ARCHIVED:" prepended to the document title. Archived documents are excluded from search returns by default; to include them, select the Include archived documents checkbox on the search page.

If you are specifically looking for out-of-date information, or are looking for information on something the UITS Support Center may no longer support, you might find your answer in the archived documents. Archived documents aren't actively maintained and so their content may be inaccurate.

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Logging in for restricted information

You may qualify for access to restricted Knowledge Base documents, depending on your IU role. For further information, see How do I log into the Knowledge Base?

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Also see:

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Last modified on April 26, 2007.
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