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friedlanders
Known Participant
March 18, 2010
Question

Using an Apostrophe in a Search

  • March 18, 2010
  • 1 reply
  • 1225 views

Hi,

I've been creating Help topics in RoboHelp 8.0.2.208 and generate WebHelp. I've tried searching the forum for this problem and have come up empty; I'm sorry if I missed it.

We are tying to help our users use the Help topics and are running into a problem with finding the best way to search for a word with an apostrophe. I understand that the system disregards apostrophes but am not clear exactly how to tell our users to enter key phrases.

For instance, a user may want to search for Alysa's Law. If they enter:

  • Alysa's Law, the search results bring up everything that contains s Law, s, or Law (I see this with the highlight on).
  • Alysas Law, the search results bring up all incidents of Law or Alysa.
  • "Alysas Law", the search results in No Topics Found.
  • "Alysa's Law", the search results in No Topics Found.
  • Alysa, the search results in No Topics Found.
  • "Alysa", the search results in No Topics Found.
  • Alysa's, the search results bring up every letter s.

Has anyone else run into this? Is it a bug? Is there something I can do in creating the Help files that will alleviate this? What would you see as the best recommendation we can give our users when searching for something like this?

Thanks. so much for any help!

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    1 reply

    F
    friedlandersAuthor
    Known Participant
    March 18, 2010

    Just want to add that we are finding the same thing with numbers with decimal points (which are probably being read as periods). For instance, we don't seem to have a way to find regulation 417.5.

    Peter Grainge
    Community Expert
    Peter GraingeCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    March 18, 2010

    I'm not sure it is a bug, just the way this search works.

    Take a look at topics on my site and use the search there. I just checked and searched on 7.0.3 and it found a topic. If your testing works, I use ZoomSearch and how to integrate it into RH is described on my site.

    See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

    @petergrainge

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    friedlandersAuthor
    Known Participant
    March 18, 2010

    Thanks, Peter. Unfortunately, I can't use ZoomSearch. It sounds like the perfect answer, but it is not allowed on the server for which I'm writing these files. Any ideas about how we can recommend searching for words/names with apostrophe-s?

    (Just did a search in my files on 414.3 and got a number of "hits" - but when reviewing the topic, there was no 414.3 - only instances of 414 and 3 were highlighted.)

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