(Archived) A probably very simple but tricky search question

[whuzizname 0]

I have many notes with intentionally similar names (these can't be changed). They are all automatically emailed into my default notebook, entitled "!INBOX". The notes are:

 

--------------------------------------------------

First meeting of the month.

Second meeting of the month.

Third meeting of the month.

 

....all the way to...

 

Thirty-first meeting of the month.

-------------------------------------------------

 

Again, the names of the notes can't be changed.

 

Now, when I do a search for the "First meeting of the month", I have been doing this:

     notebook:!INBOX "First meeting of the month"

but the search results also include the Twenty-first and Thirty-first meetings of the month, which I do not want.

 

I've changed the search syntax by inserting a space after the first quotation mark like this:

     notebook:!INBOX " First meeting of the month"

but the search results ignore that blank space, and I end up with the First, Twenty-first, and Thirty-first in the results.

 

Any help would be appreciated!

 

[Colin 13]

I presume you are using saved searches.  You can use -twenty -thirty to exclude those terms in the search.  

 

e.g. intitle:first -twenty will exclude anything with twenty and include only those with first

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

I have many notes with intentionally similar names (these can't be changed). They are all automatically emailed into my default notebook, entitled "!INBOX". The notes are:

 

--------------------------------------------------

First meeting of the month.

Second meeting of the month.

Third meeting of the month.

 

....all the way to...

 

Thirty-first meeting of the month.

-------------------------------------------------

 

Again, the names of the notes can't be changed.

 

Now, when I do a search for the "First meeting of the month", I have been doing this:

     notebook:!INBOX "First meeting of the month"

but the search results also include the Twenty-first and Thirty-first meetings of the month, which I do not want.

 

I've changed the search syntax by inserting a space after the first quotation mark like this:

     notebook:!INBOX " First meeting of the month"

but the search results ignore that blank space, and I end up with the First, Twenty-first, and Thirty-first in the results.

 

Any help would be appreciated!

 

Search words consist of consecutive letters, numbers & the underscore.  Everything else is a delimiter.  So "-first" & " first" (enclosed in quotes) may be considered the same thing.  I know in theory, that "-first" should be looking for the word 'first' preceeded by a hyphen (rather than excluding notes containing the word 'first').  But it seems that is not consistent, so I tend to not promote that type of search term. 

 

As Colin mentioned, you could add exclusion terms. 

 

Why can't you change the names of the notes?

 

Another thought...if you're having up to 31 meetings each month, it sounds like there is one meeting per day, every day, each month?  If that's true, just search on the creation date.  IE, the 31st meeting of the month (if indeed it's only one meeting per day) of January 2013, search for:

 

created:20130131 -created:20130201 intitle:"meeting of the month"