Trouble searching for a word by itself

[JCussen 1]

Hey guys,

I'm trying to search through my Evernote notes for the word hat but it keeps bringing up other words that hat would be contained in (that, chat etc). So I am wondering if there's a way to search for just that word sort of like an inverted * (so instead of finding words that contain at least that it finds words that are only that). I tried using inverted commas and a space at either side of hat but no dice. Any suggestions?

 

Thanks a million

[gazumped 11,652]

Hi.  What device,  which OS and is this an installed Evernote app or the web client?  Evernote search generally doesn't look for characters within words,  it looks for words that start with those characters;  so I'd expect 'hatred',  'hatbox' and 'hatpin' unless you searched for "hat" (including the quotes and maybe a trailing space) which would limit the hits.  I just did a search of my 46k notes and found (apparenty) around 2k notes containing 'hat'.  To be fair one note that contains the word 'hate' is highlighted and if I Ctrl+F search the note I also get highlights on 'that' in two places,  but that's the individual note search,  not the global notebook version.

[jefito 5,589]

6 hours ago, JCussen said:

Hey guys,

I'm trying to search through my Evernote notes for the word hat but it keeps bringing up other words that hat would be contained in (that, chat etc). So I am wondering if there's a way to search for just that word sort of like an inverted * (so instead of finding words that contain at least that it finds words that are only that). I tried using inverted commas and a space at either side of hat but no dice. Any suggestions?

If it's finding these matches in OCR'd texr from an image, that would make some sense, since Evernote's OCR can make more than one guess per word (so for example, it might have guesses for 'that' and 'hat' for the word 'that'). Otherwise, in normal text, as @gazumpedsays, Evernote doesn't match text like '*hat' would.

[PinkElephant 8,072]

Search is one thing where organizing  into notebook and/or with tags helps a lot.

Using the Advanced search syntax of EN, you can include or exclude notes in certain notebooks or with / without certain tags from the search.

See this article for further reference:

https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/208313828-How-to-use-Evernote-s-advanced-search-syntax

[DTLow 5,736]

7 hours ago, JCussen said:

So I am wondering if there's a way to search for just that word

Use quotes; search   "Word"

[JCussen 1]

On 9/6/2019 at 6:26 PM, gazumped said:

Hi.  What device,  which OS and is this an installed Evernote app or the web client?  Evernote search generally doesn't look for characters within words,  it looks for words that start with those characters;  so I'd expect 'hatred',  'hatbox' and 'hatpin' unless you searched for "hat" (including the quotes and maybe a trailing space) which would limit the hits.  I just did a search of my 46k notes and found (apparenty) around 2k notes containing 'hat'.  To be fair one note that contains the word 'hate' is highlighted and if I Ctrl+F search the note I also get highlights on 'that' in two places,  but that's the individual note search,  not the global notebook version.

Hey @gazumped I am using well I guess I am using two separate devices. I use my iOS app a lot but the problem is with the desktop. Actually going through it again and thinking about what all the posters here said what I see is that I was mislead by the fact that EN highlights all occurrences of hat within the notes including that what etc but in fact it will only show those individual notes if there is a "hat" in there. So it actually just means I have to comb through it and find the actual hat and disregard the others. I was just being silly I guess thank you very much for your help it is much appreciated

[CalS 5,280]

2 hours ago, JCussen said:

So it actually just means I have to comb through it and find the actual hat and disregard the others.

Try using Ctrl+F within the note and put a space in front of and behind hat.  In other words search for <space>hat<space>.  Should just find instances of hat within the note.

[jefito 5,589]

1 hour ago, CalS said:

Try using Ctrl+F within the note and put a space in front of and behind hat.  In other words search for <space>hat<space>.  Should just find instances of hat within the note.

...unless 'hat' is in quotes, or followed by punctuation like comma or semicolon or period, or if it starts a new paragraph...  

[CalS 5,280]

10 minutes ago, jefito said:

...unless 'hat' is in quotes, or followed by punctuation like comma or semicolon or period, or if it starts a new paragraph...  

IAC it is a faster start than "combing" through the results.  😝

[jefito 5,589]

4 hours ago, CalS said:

IAC it is a faster start than "combing" through the results.  😝

Sure, but when perfection isn't possible, it's good to know the bounds of imperfection...

[CalS 5,280]

3 hours ago, jefito said:

Sure, but when perfection isn't possible, it's good to know the bounds of imperfection...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tueW-r1x_FM