About Boolean Operators

Boolean operators are the foundation of the IPRO search engine. Any time you search for a keyword, partial keyword, or phrase, you can use Boolean operators to set the search parameters. IPRO Search supports almost all Boolean operators, such as AND, OR, NOT, BUT, NEAR, and so on.

During an advanced search, you will frequently encounter these two Boolean operators: AND and OR. In IPRO Search, these are called "All of" for the AND operator and "Any of" for the OR operator. The third operator you will use frequently is the NOT operator.

AND (All of)

The AND operator narrows your search by instructing IPRO Search to look for all items containing the first parameter you specify, then for all items containing the second parameter, and show only those items that contain both. For example, when searching for an email sender named Bill Rapp (your first parameter) AND a recipient named Helen Troy (second parameter), your search results will include only items containing both Bill as the sender and Helen as the recipient. Including additional parameters will result in more precise search results.

OR (Any of)

The OR operator broadens your search to include items containing either one parameter or both. The OR search is particularly useful when there are several common synonyms for a concept, or variant spellings of a word.

The following example will give results that include the term bank OR items that include account OR both bank and account.

Working with word variants, the following example will find items that include the term account OR accountant OR both.

A good rule of thumb is to remember that OR means more!

NOT

The NOT operator allows you to exclude parameters you specify, which narrows a search. When you are sure that something should not be included in a search, this is the operator to use. For example, if you are sure that a person named Dana Davis is NOT involved in the embezzlement case you are working on, then you can exclude her from the search. She may be an employee of the company you are investigating but she is not relevant to the case.

NOTE
In IPRO Search, the NOT operator is called:
Does Not Match
Does Not Contain