Topics: The Full-Text Search Document Types Keywords Results Viewing Documents Keyword Options And Operator Or Operator Not Operator The Index Search Search Fields Search Field Types Clearing Search Fields Sorting Results Viewing Documents Maximum Results Reached Capitalization Find in Document Doesn't Work Other Help
Use this search to specify a set of words to search for within the text of a document. Document Types You can search for multiple document types at the same time. By default, all document types are selected. To exclude a document type from the search, uncheck its box. Keywords Enter one or more words in the text box. When entering multiple words, such as affordable housing, documents containing affordable followed by housing will be returned. For more keyword search options, see Keyword Options. Results Full-Text search only searches the text of documents. It does not search through the index values of documents. Search results are listed in order of the number of hits found in the document from the highest to the lowest hits. Viewing Documents To view the document, click on the Files links.
There are a few options when entering keyword phrases.
And Operator To search for sets of phrases: use and between two phrases to search for documents that contain both phrases. For example, affordable housing and agreement will return documents that contain affordable followed by housing and contains agreement somewhere in the document. Or Operator use or between two phrases to search for documents that contain either of the phrases. For example, affordable housing or housing project will return documents that contain affordable followed by housing or documents that contain housing followed by project. Not Operator To exclude keywords, use one of the above operators followed by not. For example, affordable housing and not coastal will return documents that contain affordable followed by housing but does not contain coastal anywhere in the document.
Use this search to browse a single document type by one or more cataloged values (e.g. meeting date). Search Fields Each document type has a set of index fields that can be searched. Enter values in one or more of the fields. When entering multiple values, such as a meeting date between 1/1/2008 and 1/31/2008 and agency City Council, documents with a meeting date between 1/1/2008 and 1/31/2008 and the agency is City Council will be returned. Search Field Types Date Date fields have two inputs. To search a range of dates, enter the start date in the first field and the end date in the second field. To search for a single date, enter the date in either field. Providing only a start date searches for documents on or after the date. Providing only an end date searches for documents on or before the date. A calendar will appear when a date field is clicked on. To go to the prior year, click on . To go to the next year, click on . To go to the prior month, click on . To go the next month, click on . To select a date, click on it and the date will be filled in on the search field. Clicking on will fill in the search field with the current date. Text A text field can be an alphabetical or a strictly numeric field. If an invalid value is entered, a warning message will appear. If a text field has a Select button, it will accept entered text or one of the selected values. Click on the Select button to see a list of values. To use one of the list values, click on the desired list item, then click Select. List List fields restrict search values to one item in the list. Click on the field to open the list and select an item. Clearing Search Fields The Reset button clears all search field values. Sorting Results Index Search results are not ordered by default. Click on the title of a column to put the results in that order. Click on the title again to toggle between ascending and descending order. Viewing Documents To view documents, click on the File links in the View column.
A search may result in more documents than can be retrieved. The search criteria will need to be more specific in order to reduce the number of documents returned. For example, if searching by keywords, such as affordable housing, try affordable housing and agreement to make the search more specific and get fewer results. If searching by a date range, try splitting the range into separate searches with shorter ranges. For more information on keyword searching, see The Full-Text Search. For more information on catalog searching, see The Index Search.
Capitalization is ignored in full-text search keywords and in any index search text fields.
After clicking on a link to view/download a document, the document is opened in your default PDF viewer (most commonly Adobe® Reader®). At that point, all functions on the document are part of the viewer, not the web site. If you are not able to select/highlight the text in the document, to copy and paste for example, it means that the PDF file is flat. Pages in a flat PDF are treated like images (i.e. pictures). Most documents in this search site are flat PDF's. To make a PDF searchable, you will need to OCR the document (available in Adobe® Acrobat®).
To get other information about this search site or to submit comments, please contact the City Clerk's Office by sending an email to cityclerk@surfcity-hb.org.