Exceptions for search terms with "Not" in them

[btompkins]

I'm wondering if there is a way to create an exception for certain search terms not to be treated as using Boolean operator? For example, a topic for a feature that includes "Not" in the title (for example, if you were writing about the Do Not Call registry or the Do Not Disturb mode on a phone). From what I can see, the only way around it is to ensure that either the search term is between quotation marks or to leave "not" out of the search term. For example:

If I search for Do Not Disturb (no quotation marks), it treats it as searching for topics that contain "Do" but not "Disturb". Therefore, any topic that directly refers to Do Not Disturb doesn't show up in results (or in my case, "No Results Found").

Is there any way around this such as creating an exception for the search term? I think there will be users that would just enter the name of the feature in the search without the quotation marks. I thought I'd try including stop words (http://bit.ly/2bESvx9) to see if that might do the trick, but the Include "Stop-Words" in Search wasn't listed in the target properties following the steps included in the docs. So, no luck there.

Any suggestions or tips are greatly appreciated! Thanks!

[roboHAL]

Yes btompkins, there is a way around your predicament. I've found a way whereby the search can be "fooled"

Note that the search engine does consider html tags, and you can use this to your advantage.

For example, consider the word "for". If you go behind the scenes in the text editor and input (without quotes) "<span>f</span><span>o</span><span>r</span>", search will not find the word "for" in the topic. Similarly, if you use "f<b>o</b>r" where one of the characters are bold, this too throws off the search. There are many permutations, but you get the concept

[yanick]

@roboHAL, isn't @btompkins saying the opposite of what you suggest? Specifically, that he _wants_ Flare to include topics that include terms wrongly construed as Boolean terms by Flare to appear in his search results.
I too am having trouble with this.

[_[shapeonthewall]_]

@yanick and @btompkins are you still having trouble with this?

I have just discovered that our Help site suffers from the same problem. When a user searches for words that include one of the Boolean operators, the browser pops up an error notice that says "Ensure that the search string is properly formatted." The browser hangs on the search - it doesn't return results. Obviously, if the user encloses their search term in quotation marks, then the problem is avoided. But I don't expect our users to know that - and we shouldn't have to tell them to do that.

Is the only way around this to remove those operators from the stop words list? A more recent forum topic discusses that, but nobody posted a tested solution.

See:
viewtopic.php?t=33878
https://help.madcapsoftware.com/flare20 ... rdsEnglish

I'm going to test out removing those words from the stop list and see what happens. I am wary of creating unintended consequences, though!

[btompkins]

@_[shapeonthewall]_

Unfortunately, I'm not using MadCap Flare in my current role so can't test this out. I don't recall what our solution was at the time, but due to some feature renaming, we didn't have the issue longterm. Sorry I don't have anything more helpful!

Are you in the Write the Docs Slack (there's a Flare channel) or the MadCap Flare User Groups Slack? It might be worth also posting in one or either of those to see if anyone has found a workaround. Info on the MadCap Flare User Groups Slack is here in case you aren't part of it already: here: viewtopic.php?p=147382)