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Inspiring
October 12, 2011
Question

Robohelp 8 - Is there a way to search for exact phrases which contain special characters?

  • October 12, 2011
  • 1 reply
  • 713 views

Greetings!

We store enormous amounts of information within RoboHelp and there's quite a few topics that have been numbered or contain numbers. Unfortunately, when our users try to find some exact phrases, we're running into a roadblock.

Here are some examples:

Example 1:

  • We have a topic which contains multiple sections so to say within the same page. Next to the heading of each section on the page we have numbers like 7.01.7, 7.01.8, etc
  • There are some users that have the section numbers memorized, alas when they try to search for them, they can't find them
  • If we search for 7.01.7 (no quotation marks), the system returns every document which contains those individual digits (all or some) anywhere in the document (known RoboHelp behavior). The results are quite a few and unfortunately, most of the times the topic that we need is not anywhere in the search results, even though each one of those digits are present within the document
  • If we search for" 7.01.7" (with quotation marks), there are never any results returned.

Example 2:

  • A similar example is searching for any documents which contain the phrase "119-K8"
  • If we search for it without quotation marks, it will return any doc that contains 119 and/or K8
  • If we use quotation marks, there will be zero results returned.

It appears that for some reason special characters like periods or dashes cannot be used within exact phrase searches. Does anyone know of any settings or different ways to search which might allow us to find exact phrases which contain special characters?

This is my 1st time on this forum but based on what I've seen so far, it appears that there are some great minds on here that might be able to assist.

Thank you in advance

This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

Peter Grainge
Community Expert
Community Expert
October 12, 2011

See the ZoomSearch page on my site.

Sorry to give such a short answer but I think it is the right one.


See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

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Asi2013Author
Inspiring
October 12, 2011

Thank you for the speedy reply Peter. This is a very neat little tool. We'll definitely consider it as an option if we can't come up with anything else. Do you happen to now if RoboHelp 9 behaves the same way?

Thank you Sir

Assen Gueorguiev

Peter Grainge
Community Expert
Community Expert
October 12, 2011

There were improvements but not that will cover what you want.


See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

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