Logical and advanced operators in search expressions

You can use logical operators and advanced search operators to refine your search of the Help content in Help Viewer.

Logical operators

Logical operators specify how multiple search terms should be combined in a search query. The following table shows the logical operators AND, OR, NOT and NEAR.

To search for	Use	Example	Result
Both terms in the same article	AND	dib AND palette	Topics that contain both "dib" and "palette".
Either term in an article	OR	raster OR vector	Topics that contain either "raster" or "vector".
First term without the second term in the same article	NOT	"operating system" NOT DOS	Topics that contain "operating system" but not "DOS".
Both terms, close together in an article	NEAR	user NEAR kernel	Topics that contain "user" within close proximity of "kernel".

Important

You must enter logical operators in all capital letters for the search engine to recognize them.

Advanced operators

Advanced search operators refine your search for content by specifying where in an article to look for the search term. The following table describes the four available advanced search operators.

To search for	Use	Example	Result
A term in the title of the article	title:	title:binaryreader	Topics that contain "binaryreader" in their titles.
A term in a code example	code:	code:readdouble	Topics that contain "readdouble" in a code example.
A term in an example of a specific programming language	code:vb:	code:vb:string	Topics that contain "string" in a Visual Basic code example.
An article that is associated with a specific index keyword	keyword:	keyword:readbyte	Topics that are associated with the "readbyte" index keyword.

Important

You must enter advanced search operators with a final colon and no intervening space before the colon for the search engine to recognize them.

Programming languages for code examples

You can use the code: operator to find content about any of several programming languages. To return examples for a specific programming language, use one of the following programming language values:

Programming Language	Search operator syntax
Visual Basic	code:vb code:visualbasic
C#	code:c# code:csharp
C++	code:cpp code:c++ code:cplusplus
F#	code:f# code:fsharp
JavaScript	code:javascript code:js
XAML	code:xaml

Note

The code: operator only finds content that is marked up with a programming language label, as opposed to content that is generically marked up as code.

See also

• How to: Search for topics
• Microsoft Help Viewer