# Recoll user manual
Search tips, shortcuts

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#### Terms and search expansion

Term completion. Typing Esc Space in the simple search entry field while entering a word will either complete the current word if its beginning matches a unique term in the index, or open a window to propose a list of completions.

Picking up new terms from result or preview text. Double-clicking on a word in the result list or in a preview window will copy it to the simple search entry field.

Wildcards. Wildcards can be used inside search terms in all forms of searches. More about wildcards.

Automatic suffixes. Words like `odt` or `ods` can be automatically turned into query language `ext:xxx` clauses. This can be enabled in the Search preferences panel in the GUI.

Disabling stem expansion. Entering a capitalized word in any search field will prevent stem expansion (no search for `gardening` if you enter `Garden` instead of `garden`). This is the only case where character case should make a difference for a Recoll search. You can also disable stem expansion or change the stemming language in the preferences.

Finding related documents. Selecting the Find similar documents entry in the result list paragraph right-click menu will select a set of "interesting" terms from the current result, and insert them into the simple search entry field. You can then possibly edit the list and start a search to find documents which may be apparented to the current result.

File names. File names are added as terms during indexing, and you can specify them as ordinary terms in normal search fields (Recoll used to index all directories in the file path as terms. This has been abandoned as it did not seem really useful). Alternatively, you can use the specific file name search which will only look for file names, and may be faster than the generic search especially when using wildcards.

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