This guide will enable you to take full control of your results by building sophisticated search strings. As with all specialist databases, there are variations in how we employ search operators. The database will also tell you if there is a problem with syntax in your search, and will ask you to resolve it.
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Connectors
AND & | Vable assumes AND if you type more than one search term. For clarity, you can add it to your search, e.g. apples AND pears |
OR | Broaden your search with OR e.g. GDPR OR "data protection regulation*” |
AND NOT - | Exclude terms using AND NOT or the minus sign e.g. "housing act" AND NOT construction OR "housing act" -construction |
" " | Search for phrases with straight quote marks e.g. "intellectual property". Be careful not to use curly quotation marks if you’ve copied and pasted from another location. |
For more information about use of " " (quotation marks) in advanced searching see below.
Note: Vable will change all Boolean connectors to uppercase, if a phrase includes a connector in it. Use quotation marks around the phrase to instruct the search to include the connector as a term.
Wildcards
* | Truncation (or stemming) allows you to search for the root form of a word with any ending e.g. employ* will find employ, employment, employer.
You cannot use the wildcard at the start of a word (e.g. *employ)
You can have up to a maximum of 7 wildcard phrases in any one search with a maximum of 3 terms in a wildcard phrase.
The below search would work because there are no more than 3 terms in any wildcard phrase and the maximum of 7 wildcard phrases throughout the full string. "som* anot* idea*" OR "anot* som*" OR "not* some*" OR "some* test*" OR "some* test*" OR "som* anot*" OR "anot* som*" OR "not some" OR "some test" OR (some* AND test*) OR anot* OR som* OR (some* AND test*) OR anot* OR som* OR “some other word here”~10 |
? | Replace a single character in a word. For example, computeri?e will return computerize and computerise |
Proximity and Grouping
“ “~n | Proximity searches allow you to refine your searches by looking for words that are close to each other. For example, "bribery banking"~10 will look for bribery and banking within 10 words of each other.
Proximity searches can be combined with the truncation operator (*) to form variations of a search. You can use up to 3 truncation operators in a single proximity search. |
( ) | Brackets enable you to combine different ideas within the same search. They can be used in different ways, for example:
Ensure all your brackets are closed and accounted for before searching. |
A note on proximity searching: The closer the text in a field is to the original order specified in the query string, the more relevant that document is considered to be. For example "fox quick"~5, the phrase "quick fox" would be considered more relevant than "quick brown fox".
Useful Vable-Specific Search Tools
Case Sensitive | Use the ‘Aa’ Match Case icon to the right of the search field to find proper names, or to meet other specific capitalization requirements. It will search for exactly what you type.
Case sensitivity can be applied to each individual query field.
Case sensitivity does not work when using field commands in the search query, example title:Target. It does, however, work if you select a field from the dropdown menu, which applies the setting to the whole query field. |
Quick Field Searching | The search defaults to run across all fields. However using the dropdown to the left of the search field allows you to limit your results to individual fields. The available fields are:
Note that when using the individual field filter, it will apply to the entire string, e.g. Summary: HSBC AND London will require both words to appear in the summary field. To specify which fields certain words should appear in, e.g. Title contains: HSBC AND Url contains: “Financial Times”, use Power Field Searching (see below). |
Power Field Searching | By default, searches look for terms across all fields. However you can combine multiple field searches in a single query using the format fieldName:query. By including the field parameters in the search string, you are able to be very specific about where certain terms appear. Be sure to format the field name as seen below, adhering to capitalizations. The available fields are:
Examples: You only want articles from Insurance day on the future of London’s insurance market or the impact of Brexit url:insuranceday introText:(brexit OR "london* insurance future"~10)
You might want to run a search for companies using keywords keywords:(company companyname)
You might be looking for reports on green energy keywords:"green energy" title:report
In some cases it might be possible to use a Vable filter instead, especially when looking for companies, sources (URLs) or publishers. |
Foreign Language Searching | You can search in the native text and characters of any language. If you are searching for the company China COSCO Shipping, you can type its name as 中国远洋. |
Symbols or Other Special Characters
In some cases, you may have punctuation as part of your search string which Vable recognises only as a search operator. The most common symbols include:
+ - = && || > < ! ( ) { } [ ] ^ " ~ * ? : \ /
You have two options to deal with these:
Remove all punctuation and use proximity searching or wildcards. For example, Gilbert + Tobin would become "Gilbert Tobin"~2
Instruct Vable to look for the character itself, rather than using it as a search operator. Do this by adding a \ (leading backslash). For example, to find geeklawblog.com/2021 in a URL field search, add the leading slash; geeklawblog.com\/2021
You can use " " (quotation marks) to designate phrases when you enter your terms, but Vable does not search for the quotation marks. For example, "law firm marketing" finds the phrase, but does not locate only those documents where it finds the phrase in quotation marks.
Likewise when you are using brackets, it will use them to group your search concepts, but will not find results where brackets appear.
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