Specifications

Chapter 4: Using Help 37
Using the Search Tab
The Search tab lets you search the entire text of the
Help system for one or more words and then lists
the topics that include those words. The list of re-
sults is ranked, placing the topics that the Search
feature considers most likely to be relevant at the
top of the list.
When you search for text, the text string automati-
cally highlights by default. You can turn these
highlights off. You can also stop displaying high-
lights after a search by using the Back and Forward
buttons to go to a different topic. When you come
back to your searched topic, the highlights no lon-
ger display.
For more guidelines on using the Search feature ef-
fectively, see “Search Guidelines” on page 38.
To perform a basic search:
1 Click the Search tab.
2 In the Search pop-up menu (located below the
Search text box), click whether you want to
search in “All Available Books” or a specific
book (such as Pro Tools Shortcuts).
3 In the Search text box, type the word or words
that you want to find.
4 Click Go.
A list of topics and ranking numbers appears.
Additional Search Information
The Search feature provides the best combination
of usefulness and speed. To use Search success-
fully, you should understand the following aspects
of the Search feature:
• The Search feature uses a database of valid
words. This database includes all words that are
significant for identifying topics and excludes
all other words. When you type words in the
search text box, the system ignores any invalid
words that you have typed and searches for valid
words.
• The Search feature cannot search for words in a
certain order. For example, if you type “TIFF
graphics import” as a search entry, Search dis-
plays all topics that contains these three words
regardless of their location in the topic. The re-
sults include topics where the three words ap-
pear together as a phrase, and also topics where
the three words are scattered throughout the
topic.
• The Search feature cannot distinguish between
words that are similar but not identical. For ex-
ample, if you type “capture” as a search entry,
Search displays topics that include that word,
but it does not find topics that include related
words such as “captures” or “capturing.” If a
search for a word fails to produce useful results,
you might be more successful if you search
again using one of the related words.
The Help system’s search functionality has a
limitation when the Help system is running in
the Safari browser. You can perform one
search successfully, but subsequent searches
do not return results until you clear the Safari
cache. You can do this by quitting Safari and
relaunching the Help, or by emptying the
cache directly (select Safari > Empty Cache,
or use the Command+Option+E keyboard
shortcut). Other browsers, such as Mozilla
Firefox, do not have this limitation.