The Text Search function allows you to explore your documents without first coding them. If you have already coded data, you can also search only the coded segments which are currently listed in the “Retrieved Segments” window.
The Text Search function can be started by clicking on the magnifying glass icon in the Analysis menu tab.
The following window will appear:
Entering a search item
When the dialog box first comes up, the left pane is empty, and you can just start typing to enter the word or string (called the “search item”) that you want to find. Use the return key to enter multiple search items.
To add additional search items later, click on “New entry …”. To edit an existing search item, click on it once.
Search item may consist of one word, multiple words, or only of a part of a word. For instance, you can search for “Tom Hanks,” “Hanks,” or only “anks.” Quotation marks are not necessary if a search string consists of more than one word - it would lead MAXQDA to only search for words that are placed in quotation marks.
Search strings may contain so-called “wildcard” characters. You can use the following wildcard characters:
| ? | single chracter | l?ve finds "love" and "live" |
| * | multiple chracters | h*ks finds "hanks" and "hawks”, if the option "Whole word" was selected (see below) |
| <(...) | word beginning | <(inter) finds "interests" and "internal", but not "winter" |
| (...)> | word end | (sh)> finds "slash" and "flash", but not "ashes". |
Deleting a search item
To remove search items from the list, click the x symbol next to the word or select the whole line and click the delete symbol at the top of the dialog window. By holding down the Ctrl key (Windows) or ⌘ key (macOS), you can delete multiple search strings at once.
Text search options
You will find the options for the search procedure in the right pane of the Text Search window.
First, you must specify where you wish to search: In documents, In comments, In paraphrases, or In memos.
Other options:
- Find whole words – Search only for strings that are exactly the same as the search string. For example, if you search for “teach,” the string “teacher” will not be included in the search results. If you turn this function off, “teach” would also give you the strings “teacher” or “teaching” as results.
- Case sensitive – Search only for strings in which the same letters are capitalized as in the search string.
- Interpret search items as regular expressions – The entered search terms are interpreted as "regular expressions". Regular expressions can be used to perform complex searches (see below for more information).
- Ignore hyphens in words (PDF) – If this option is enabled, search in PDF documents will also find words that contain a hyphen, e.g., because they are hyphenated at the end of a line due to hyphenation and continue on the next line. Searching for “climate” will then also find “cli-mate”.
- Find all word forms (lemma list) – Searches are conducted not only for an entered search term but also for all its word forms. A search for "go" will also find the word "went". The option affects only single words, not composite words. MAXQDA uses lemmata lists in different languages for this option, so you also have to set the language of the search items in the drop-down menu.
You can also choose how the search items are linked with each other:
- With the OR combination, a hit is always included in the results list when one of the search terms is found.
- With the AND combination, all the search terms must occur within a defined distance of each other in an adjustable search range.
- Document – the two search terms must occur somewhere within a document. In this case, the maximum distance cannot be set.
- Paragraph (Text, Tables) – the two search terms must occur within xx paragraphs. The search only includes text and table documents.
- Sentence (Text, Tables, PDFs) – the two search terms must occur within xx sentences. In addition to text and table documents, the search also includes PDF files.
As soon as you have selected AND, another option is made available directly below it:
Within xx document/paragraph/sentence.
With xx you define the maximum distance of the search items.
The following options are available as a search range:
Example 1: You search for the terms "public" AND "citizen" within a document. MAXQDA will then check that both of the two terms occur at least once. A row is displayed in the results table for each document in which both terms occur at least once.
Example 2: You search for the terms "public" AND "citizen" within 1 paragraph. The list of results then contains as many rows as there are paragraphs in which both search terms occur.
Example 3: You search for the terms "public" AND "citizen" within 2 paragraphs. For example, if paragraph 12 contains the term "public", then "citizen" must appear in paragraphs 11, 12, or 13. Only then will this count as a hit.
As soon as you click the Search button, the search will begin.
Depending on how many documents you search and how complex the search is, it could take some time to find all of the results.
Searching with regular expressions
If you select the option Interpret search items as regular expressions, MAXQDA interprets the entered search terms as "regular expressions". These are widely used in information technology and allow complex searches to be carried out. The following table contains some examples of regular expression searches:
| Search term | Explanation | Example |
|---|---|---|
| d | Number from 0 to 9 | 200d finds all years from 2000 to 2009 |
| […] | One of the characters in brackets | h[oôó]tel finds hotel, hôtel, hótel 200[0-9] finds all years from 2000 to 2009 Class [34][a-d] finds class 3a, class 3b to class 4d |
| ( | ) | One of the character combinations in brackets | M(ay|ey|ai|ei)er finds Mayer, Meyer, Maier, and Meier |
| \? | The question mark is searched for; it is not interpreted as wildcard of any single character | Why\? finds all text parts equal to “Why?” |
As an example, a helpful tutorial on the use of regular expressions can be found on the following website:
https://medium.com/factory-mind/regex-tutorial-a-simple-cheatsheet-by-examples-649dc1c3f285
Saving search terms
Searches can be saved, i.e., you won't have to enter the search terms again. Click Save, enter the name of the saved scan, and then click Save again. Search files are saved with the extension .SEA (an abbreviation for search). Saved searches can be loaded at any time.
