How the Search Works (OR operator)

By default when you put in several words, the search engine looks on IT@Cornell for pages that have any of those words in them. If you search for Microsoft office the results will show if they have the word Microsoft OR office in them. So you may see pages about Microsoft Office, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Word, Virtual Office, Out of office Reply, Office of the CIO.

Find Pages with All Words (AND Operator)

To limit your results to pages that have all your search words use two ampersands (&&). For example email && google or adobe && photoshop && license.

Find a Phrase

Placing works in quotation marks will search for that exact phrase instead of searching for both words. Try it with muted push and "muted push".

Search for Word Variations (Wildcards)

Use an asterix (*) to search for multiple characters. For example, graduat* would find graduate, graduates, graduation, graduating. 

Force a Word to Appear

Use the plus symbol (+) to make sure that all of your results contain that word. Compare, for example, Microsoft outlook and Microsoft +outlook. 

Exclude a Word from Search

Use the minus symbol (-) to eliminate that word from your search results. Microsoft office and
 -microsoft office give you two very different results.

Combine Search Parameters

You can combine parameters. Searching +student spread* -google says that the page:

• must have student
• must not have google
• can also have spread, spreads, spreading, spreadsheets (etc.)