Home • Workspaces • Searching
Important note: The search described here ONLY pertains to the educational and free editions of PBworks. If you are using PBworks for your business, in a Business Edition network, then your search benefits from being professionally indexed and being able to search for terms across workspaces. Click here for more information about searching in your Business Edition network.
Basic Searching
Every PBworks page has a search bar in the upper right region which allows a basic search of works pages and files. Everyone who has access to the workspace has access to the search bar, however, the results will be tailored to their permission level. If you put custom security on a restricted-access page, then that page won't appear in search results performed by users who haven't been granted access.
Searching inside files
All the content of all the pages you create on PBworks will always be fully searchable. The search will also cover the following kinds of uploaded files on premium workspaces:
| Filetypes that can be searched |
Extension |
| Microsoft Word documents |
(.DOC, .DOCX) |
| Portable Document Format |
(.PDF) |
| Excel Spreadsheets |
(.XLS, .XLSX) |
| PowerPoint Presentations |
(.PPT, .PPTX) |
| Text Files |
(.TXT) |
Autocomplete
The search field also has an autocomplete feature installed which suggests content on your workspace as you type.
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When you first enter a letter all the pages which start with that letter will automatically appear. If you see the page you want in this list, these pages can be clicked on directly.
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As you type, the field gets smaller because the more you type, the fewer matches there will be. This list was shortened as the search criteria went from "m" to "me". |
Autocomplete can also find words that are within a file or page's name. For example, a search for "Trends," included the file result "Market Trends.xls".
Next to each autocomplete suggestion is an icon, indicating what kind of content it is.
Note: Tags do not appear in the autocomplete search box.
| Icon |
Type of Content |
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Workspace page |
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PDF |
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Document |
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Video |
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Spreadsheet |
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PowerPoint |
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Audio |
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Text File |
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Image (small thumbnail of image content) |
Tags
Tags are words and phrases that can be associated with workspace pages to make searching easier. If a page is tagged with a keyword, when that keyword is searched, pages with that tag will appear at the top of the list.
Here are the steps for tagging a page:
- Click the "Add Tags" link on the side of the workspace page. If you can't see this link, then you don't have sufficient permission to create tags.
- When you click the Add Tags link, you should see an input box appear. It will have some gray example text, but once you click inside the box, the example text will disappear.
- Add the words you want associated with the page. You may use a phrase as a tag, and all tags should be separated by commas.
- Click OK, and the tags will be added to the page.
Searching for Tagged Pages
Can't remember the name of a page, but remember it's tag? Use your workspace's search tool to search for pages marked with a tag by entering tag:"anytag", replacing "anytag" with a tag that you have attached to the page.
Example: to search for all pages tagged with a "report" tag, enter tag:report into your workspace's Search bar.
Listing of All Tags and Tagged Pages
For a complete list of all tags and tagged pages, you can direct your workspace's users to your tags.php page by entering the following URL into your browser's address bar: "yourworkspace".pbworks.com/w/tags, replacing "yourworkspace" with your workspace's name.
Example: for a list of all tags used by the PBworks Manual, check out usermanual.pbworks.com/w/tags
The template Tag
If you tag a workspace page with the word "template" (no quotes, lowercase), it will show up in your list of templates when you create a new page. All pages that are tagged with the tag "template" will appear in the drop down list when creating a page.
Search Tips
PBworks offers you a robust search engine. Use these search tips to narrow your results:
- A plus sign (+) before a word means it must be included in search results (eg: brown +cow returns pages that may or may not contain "brown" but must contain "cow")
- A minus sign (-) before a word means it must be absent in search results. (eg: brown -cow returns pages that contain “brown” but must not contain “cow”)
- Quotes ("") around a phrase returns that exact phrase (eg: "brown cow" returns only pages that include the exact phrase “brown cow")
- Also, search results are sorted by weight, which means that a page with many instances of a keyword will appear at the top of the list.
- The order of search keywords does not affect score / output.
- Adding "tag:foo" anywhere in the search box will constrain the search to only look at pages tagged "foo" (and their comments). You can't yet perform a search that will only look at pages tagged with both "foo" and "bar". (I.e., you can only search with one tag restriction at a time)
- Adding "folder:foo" anywhere in the search box will constrain the search to only look at pages in folder "foo" (and their comments). This doesn't yet apply to files in that folder.
- Searching across attachment content (.DOC, .PDF, .XLS, .PPT, .TXT) is a feature currently available only to premium workspaces.
- Add "type:file" to your search inquiry to search just files, "type:user" to search by users, "type:pages" to search just within pages, or "src:" to search within the source code.
