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Full Text Search

September 29, 2025
Contributed by: 
P

Full Text search allows you to search by keywords contained within the body of the document.

Limitations

  • Files greater than 20 MB are not indexed for Full Text Search, and will not appear in search results.

  • This feature is not available for files stored in an on-prem storage zone.

How are Files Indexed?

Files must be indexed by our servers after they have been uploaded, so full text search may not be immediately available for recently uploaded documents. Our indexing servers scan documents once they have been uploaded to allow searching via filename and the content contained in the body of the document. When filenames are indexed both the full filename and any words that are separated by numbers and punctuation (including spaces) become searchable terms. For example:

  • JohnSmith.pdf is indexed under ‘johnsmith’ and ‘pdf’.
  • John-Smith.pdf is indexed under ‘john’, ‘smith’, and ‘pdf’.
  • John26Smith.pdf is indexed under ‘john26smith’, ‘john’, ‘26’, ‘smith’, and ‘pdf’.

Note:

The indexing procedure for text contained within the body of a document is slightly different than for file names. The content searcher will only remove possessives (John’s becomes searchable under john) and collapse acronyms (F.B.I. becomes searchable under fbi).

It will not separate terms by numbers or punctuation other than apostrophes.

There are a number of characters you can utilize to modify your search results. Examples and descriptions can be found below:

“A B” - Bounding terms in quotations ensures that the search results contain those ordered terms. For example:

  • A search for John Smith would return files named ‘John Smith Files.pdf’ and ‘John David Smith Files.pdf’. A modified search utilizing quotations, “John Smith” would limit the search results to the file named ‘John Smith Files.pdf’.

“*“ - Adding an asterisk after a term enables searching for prefixes. For example

  • JohnSmith.pdf is indexed under ‘johnsmith’ and ‘pdf’, and is typically only searchable by those terms. Entering a search for Johnwould enable search to pull up this file, since john is a prefix of smith. This feature is not limited to complete words, so a search for Joh would also return JohnSmith.pdf as a result.

”+” - Adding a plus symbol (required operator) before a term requires that the term exist somewhere in the search. For example:

  • A search for documents that must contain the term Smith and may contain John would follow this format: John +Smith. This search query would return the files John Smith.pdf and Adam Smith.pdf, but not the file John Adams.pdf.

”-“ - Adding a minus symbol (prohibit operator) before a term excludes documents that contain the term used after the “-“ symbol. For example:

  • A search for documents that contain the term John but not Smith would follow this format: John –Smith. This search query would return the file John Adams.pdf, but not the file John Smith.pdf.
Full Text Search
September 29, 2025
Contributed by: 
P
September 29, 2025
Contributed by: 
P

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