MedicAlert Foundation International

Information on how to use Search

There are 2 types of basic queries: Terms and Phrases.
A Term is a single word search.
A Phrase would wrap a string of words in quotes and find matches on the extact string.

Boolean Operators
You can combine basic queries with Boolean operators to form a more complex query. Boolean operators define the relationships between Terms or Phrases. Our search supports the following Boolean operators: AND, "+", OR, NOT and "-". Please note that Boolean operators must be all uppercase.

AND
example search: default AND document
This is the default operator. It will be used if there is no Boolean operator between two terms. For example: default document is the same as default AND document. In this case both terms need to exist within a listing to find a match on that listing.The + character is synonymous with using AND.

OR
example search: default OR document
In this case just one of the terms needs to exist within a listing to find a match on that listing.

NOT
example search: default NOT "document type"
The NOT operator excludes documents that contain the term (or phrase) after NOT. So a listing match would have to include the word default but not the phrase "document type". The - character is synonymous with using NOT.

Wildcard/Prefix queries
You can perform "wildcard" or "prefix" queries using the '*' operator. Whereas all of the previous search found exact matches on the whole term or phrase, a wildcard search will find partial matches.
example search: ehr*
This query will match all documents containing words beginning with the prefix 'ehr' like the word Ehrlichia.