Modifying a Search

There may be times when a keyword search you perform returns a larger number of results than you had anticipated. Sifting through these results can be laborious, particularly if you are looking for a specific piece of information.

One way of dealing with this problem is to change your search parameters. On the screen displaying your search results, click Modify Search in the Options bar. This takes you back to the Search screen, where you can change your keywords or target sources.

Alternatively, you can conduct a search of your search results. In other words, you take the results generated by your original search and filter them further by adding additional parameters. We can illustrate this procedure by way of example.

Example: Narrowing your search results

1. Suppose you're searching for information on IRA accounts in the Federal Editorial Materials sources. In your initial search, you may have typed the keywords Individual Retirement Account. However, you find that this keywords string yields 805 documents, which is far too many to be manageable.

2. Given that your client is a widow, you can use the Search Within Results feature to sift through these results and identify only those documents that also contain the word widow.

3. From the Search Results screen, click Search Within Results in the left sidebar to open the Search Within Results screen.

4. In the Keywords field, type widow.

5. Click Search. Checkpoint searches the documents returned by your original search, and retrieves only those documents that also contain the word widow - in this case, a more practical 15 items.
   
   When viewing the second set of results, you'll notice that only the term widow is highlighted; your original keywords are not highlighted.

Notes:

• You can narrow a search as many times as you like. In other words, if you use Search Within Results, and still receive too many documents, you can qualify your search again to further reduce the number of items retrieved.

• The record of a narrowed search in the Search History table includes all your keywords from the initial and subsequent searches.

• If you click Modify Search after using  Search Within Results, you return to the original Search screen.

Related topics:

• Viewing and Navigating Your Search Results
• Document List Navigation Tools

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