# Recoll user manual
Searching with the Qt graphical user interface

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### Simple search

1. Start the recoll program.

2. Possibly choose a search mode: Any term, All terms, File name or Query language.

3. Enter search term(s) in the text field at the top of the window.

4. Click the Search button or hit the Enter key to start the search.

The initial default search mode is Query language. Without special directives, this will look for documents containing all of the search terms (the ones with more terms will get better scores), just like the All terms mode which will ignore such directives. Any term will search for documents where at least one of the terms appear.

The Query Language features are described in a separate section.

All search modes allow wildcards inside terms (`*`, `?`, `[]`). You may want to have a look at the section about wildcards for more information about this.

File name will specifically look for file names. The point of having a separate file name search is that wild card expansion can be performed more efficiently on a small subset of the index (allowing wild cards on the left of terms without excessive penality). Things to know:

- White space in the entry should match white space in the file name, and is not treated specially.

- The search is insensitive to character case and accents, independantly of the type of index.

- An entry without any wild card character and not capitalized will be prepended and appended with '*' (ie: `etc` -> `*etc*`, but `Etc` -> `etc`).

- If you have a big index (many files), excessively generic fragments may result in inefficient searches.

You can search for exact phrases (adjacent words in a given order) by enclosing the input inside double quotes. Ex: `"virtual reality"`.

When using a stripped index, character case has no influence on search, except that you can disable stem expansion for any term by capitalizing it. Ie: a search for `floor` will also normally look for `flooring`, `floored`, etc., but a search for `Floor` will only look for `floor`, in any character case. Stemming can also be disabled globally in the preferences. When using a raw index, the rules are a bit more complicated.

Recoll remembers the last few searches that you performed. You can use the simple search text entry widget (a combobox) to recall them (click on the thing at the right of the text field). Please note, however, that only the search texts are remembered, not the mode (all/any/file name).

Typing Esc Space while entering a word in the simple search entry will open a window with possible completions for the word. The completions are extracted from the database.

Double-clicking on a word in the result list or a preview window will insert it into the simple search entry field.

You can cut and paste any text into an All terms or Any term search field, punctuation, newlines and all - except for wildcard characters (single `?` characters are ok). Recoll will process it and produce a meaningful search. This is what most differentiates this mode from the Query Language mode, where you have to care about the syntax.

You can use the Tools → Advanced search dialog for more complex searches.

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