In any view, you can display the search bar from View > Search this view.

This is compact mode.

1. Type any word or phrase to search in the search bar. To search phrases, enclose them within double quotes.
2. The green dot indicates the database is indexed and up to date.
3. "Show results" lets you control the presentation of results. The default display is ranking by relevance.

Only profiles displayed in the current view will be searched; therefore, if the current view does not contain all the document, extract or fact profiles, then the full database will not be searched.

To search, simply type the word or words you are looking for and click on the "Search" button. I Profiles which meet the search criteria will be displayed ranked according to their relevance.

• Click on the drop down arrow on the right of the search bar to display the expanded search bar.
• Type "metallurgy" in the "Search for" field and click on the "Search" button.

Two documents match and are shown in order of relevance, with the more relevant documents listed first. The grey shaded bar in the selection margin indicates the document's relevance.

Hits are highlighted (green) in the matched profiles.

In addition to just typing a word or phrase, MasterFile features many advanced search methods.

• Clicking "Example Form" on the Search bar brings up the Add Condition window.
  1. Select a form.
  2. Choose or fill fields just as you would a profile.

• Use Word Variants to finds words with the base word + certain suffixes. For example, a search for "swim" will also find "swims", "swimming", "swimmer", and even "swimmed". It will not find the variation "swam", however, because the base word has changed, or "swimmet", or "swimsed" because the suffixes are not acceptable with that word.
• Use Fuzzy search. This option finds documents that have matches similar to your search. For example:

• Operators such as
  • Logical: "AND", "OR" or "NOT".
  • Proximity: "PARAGRAPH" or "SENTENCE".
  • Wild card:  "?" and "*".
  • Numerical:  "=", "<", ">", "<=" and ">=".
  • Others, including "CONTAINS", "FIELD", "TERMWEIGHT", "EXACTCASE" and parentheses "( )" to specify a particular field, the importance of a word in the search, to match the case of the word, or specify the precedence of the search. For example: (FIELD Projectname CONTAINS top secret OR FIELD Title CONTAINS tuna) AND (Field body CONTAINS cat OR Field revdate > 01/01/2004).

All operators and advanced techniques are explained in detail here.

When you create a new MasterFile database, a full text index is created automatically. However, if you need to recreate the index yourself, here's how.

Click on [R+ General > Update full-text index].

• If you are not asked to create the index, the database is already indexed, and it will merely be updated.
• If the database is not indexed, the "Create Full-Text Index" dialog box will be displayed.

Alternatively,

• Open the database or select the case database icon on the workspace.
• Click File > Application > Properties.

On the Properties Box

• Click the magnifier tab and then the appropriate button.

On the Create Full-Text Index window, set the options as below.

If your database is on a server, choose the frequency with which the server should update the index. We recommend hourly as a reasonable choice. However, if you require, you may force a manual update of the index at any time by again clicking on [R+ General > Update full-text index].

• Click OK to create the full text index.

The full text index will be created and you will be advised when it is complete in the status bar at the bottom of the Notes window, or you can use the Properties Box's magnifier as explained above.

After doing a full text search, if you have a profile open in the preview pane (click in it first, or press F6 to switch to it), or open in its own window, you can use <Ctrl+> and <Ctrl-> to move to the next or previous highlighted instance of the words found. You can also add their icons to the button bar.

The "Search in document" icon, the magnifying glass, can be used to quickly "drill down" a text or a transcript to find text within it. For example, if you notice the name "John Smith", simply highlight it in the profile text and click on "Search in document".

• You can continue to scroll and work with the profile while the search dialogue box is displayed.
• The highlighted text is also copied to the clipboard for use elsewhere if you need.

If you need to find profiles you have created, you can:

• Use the [L+ Miscellaneous >by Entered date] view. The default view is descending date order. If you click the  "Entered by" column, the view sorts all profiles alphabetically by their creator.
• Use full text search, by clicking "Fill out example form..." on the expanded search bar. Then
  1. Select the document, extract or fact Form type,  
  2. Enter your name in the "by" portion of "MasterFile entry date" field.
  3. Click Add.

and searching.