MPG Online

Help: How to Search

MPG Online provides a simple, full-text search of the chapters of the Guide. You'll find the search entry screen in the lower left corner of the window underneath the Table of Contents. Just enter your search terms and click on the "Search" button. The results will appear in the pane on the right.

Simple boolean searches are supported, including use of the operators "AND" (or "&&"), "OR" (or "||"), and "NOT" (or "!"). (If you use the word form of these operators, they should be capitalized--that is, you should use "AND" rather than "and".) In addition, you may search for phrases by surrounding the phrase in double quotes (""). An asterisk (*) acts as a wildcard character matching 0 or more characters, so that the term "posses*" would retrieve documents containing any of the words "possess", "possession", "possessing", "possesses", and so on. A "?" acts as a wildcard for a single character. "hal?" would thus match "hall", "halt", and "hale".

Each chapter that matches your search will be listed in the results pane along with a few excerpts showing your search terms in context. As the picture below shows, you'll also find links to view the text of the chapter or to view the text with all appearances of your search terms highlighted.

Sample result

In the highlighted view, each search term is shown with white characters on a dark red background, along with some navigation icons like so:

Sample highlight

Clicking on the simple pointers (< or >) will take you to the previous or next highlight, respectively. The other pointers (<< and >>) will jump to the top or bottom, respectively, of the chapter text.


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