• + A leading plus sign indicates that this word must be present in each record that is returned.
• - A leading minus sign indicates that this word must not be present in any of the records that are returned.
• (no operator) By default (when neither + nor - is specified) the word is optional.
• ( ) Parentheses group words into subexpressions. Parenthesized groups can be nested.
• * The asterisk serves as the truncation (or wildcard) operator. Unlike the other operators, it should be appended to the word to be affected. Words match if they begin with the word preceding the * operator.
• " A phrase that is enclosed within double quote ('"') characters matches only records that contain the phrase literally, as it was typed.

The following examples demonstrate some search strings:

• apple banana Find records that contain at least one of the two words.
• +apple +juice Find records that contain both words.
• +apple macintosh Find records that contain both words.
• +apple -macintosh Find records that contain the word "apple" but not "macintosh".
• apple* Find rows that contain words such as "apple", "apples", "applesauce", or "applet".
• "some words" Find records that contain the exact phrase "some words" (for example, records that contain "some words of wisdom" but not "some noise words"). Note that the " characters that enclose the phrase are operator characters that delimit the phrase. They are not the quotation marks that enclose the search string itself.