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 results 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 automatically highlights by default. You can turn these highlights off. You can also stop displaying highlights 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 longer display.

For more guidelines on using the Search feature effectively, see Search Guidelines.

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 successfully, 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 displays all topics that contains these three words regardless of their location in the topic. The results include topics where the three words appear 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 example, 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.