Search Panel

You can use the Search panel to search the publication for content. It searches the entire publication database. At the very top of the panel is a search tool bar. Below that is the search specification area, and below that the results area used for displaying search results.

To search for articles:

Enter your search criteria in the search specification area.
Press Enter or click on the Search button in the tool bar.

Search Specification Area

Use the controls in the search specification area as follows:

Find

Enter words you think will appear in the content items you are interested in. The search function will list all content items that contain all of the words you enter. Entering Barack Obama, for example, will find all articles containing both "Barack" and "Obama" (even if the words do not appear together). It will not, however return articles that only contain "Barack" or only contain "Obama".

To search for the exact phrase "Barack Obama", enclose the words in quotation marks: that is, enter "Barack Obama".

You can search for any words in any content items fields and/or properties: you can enter an author's name, for example, in order to search for content items created by a particular person, or if you know the ID of the content item you are looking for, you can enter that.

You can search for images, video clips and other multimedia objects by entering words or strings of characters that you think may appear in the metadata stored with the object: the name of the file, for example. Metadata is "data about data", and exactly what metadata is stored with the multimedia objects in your system depends on how the system has been set up. Typical items of metadata that might be stored with an image include the name of the image file, its resolution, the date on which it was taken, the name of the photographer, technical details such as the focus and aperture settings used, comments and so on.

You can use the * character as a wild card in your search terms.

If you know the Content Engine ID of the item you are interested in, you can search for it by entering id: followed by the ID. Searching for id:9999, for example, will find only items with the ID 9999. Content items that happen to contain the number 9999 will not be returned. The maximum number of results that can be returned from an id: search is 3: one content item, one person and one section.

Date

You can restrict your search to content published during a particular period by entering a date specification in this field.

A date specification consists of a date, a duration or a date followed by a duration. Content Studio accepts dates in a wide range of formats. A duration is a number preceded by a plus or minus sign: -n means a period of n days prior to a date and +n means a period of n days following a date. If you specify a duration on its own, then the date in question is today's date; otherwise the date you specify is used. If you specify both a date and a duration, then you must specify the date first and leave a space between the date and the duration.

Here are some example date specifications:

05 or 5 - the 5th of this month.
0510 or 510 - in Europe, October 5th this year; in the US, May 10th this year
05102007 - in Europe, October 5th 2007; in the US, May 10th 2007
-31 - today and the preceding 30 days
+7 - today and the following 6 days
-5h - from 19:00 this evening until midnight
+5h - from midnight last night until 05:00 this morning
0510 -31 - October 5th/May 10th this year and the preceding 30 days
0510 +7 - October 5th/May 10th this year and the following 6 days

You can include a variety of punctuation marks in dates: 05102007, 05.10.2007, 05/10/2007 and 05-10/2007 will all be accepted and interpreted as the same date.

If you leave the field empty, then the whole publication history is searched.

Advanced

Displays further controls that you can use to "fine tune" your search:

States: You can use this field to restrict your search to content items that are in a particular state: only published documents, for example. Select the state you are interested in. Hold down the Ctrl key and click again to deselect it.
Sections: You can use this field to restrict your search to content items that appear in a particular section of the publication. Select the section you are interested in. Hold down the Ctrl key and click again to deselect it.
Search in all dates: If you have specified something in the Date field, then usually only articles published in the specified period will be returned. If you check this option, however, then all dates stored with an article are used, and you will also get articles that changed in other ways during the specified period (articles that were created, activated, expired or last modified during the period, for example).

At the bottom of the search specification area are the following buttons: you can use them to limit the types of content items returned by the search:

All: The search will return all kinds of content items.
Articles: The search will return content items with mainly textual content.
Images: The search will return content items containing images.
Video: The search will return content items containing video clips.
Attachments: The search will return content items containing multimedia attachments such as video, sound, documents (PDFs, for example).
Other: The search will return content items with content that does not fall into any of the other categories (personal profiles, for example).

Results Area

The results of your search are listed in this area. If many articles are found, you can use the scroll bar on the right of the list to view the whole list. If more than 1000 articles are found, only the first 1000 are listed: the approximate number found is displayed at the bottom of the list.

You can change the layout of the results list by clicking on the layout buttons ( graphics/layout-buttons.png ) above the list. You can also sort the results in different ways using the sort controls above the list. The "sort by" picker ( graphics/sort-by-picker.png ) lets you choose which criterion to sort the results by, and the sort order button ( ) lets you switch between ascending and descending sort order.

Tool Bar

The Search tool bar contains the following tools:

: Show previous search.
: Show next search.
: Reset all search specifications to their default values, and execute a new search.
: Execute a new search. Note that the search is automatically executed whenever you press enter, or change a search specification.