This page provides help on how to enter search terms and what abbreviations/values to use for document categories, document types, host computers and organizations.

Use the following examples to help you enter information into the search fields:

Entered search terms	Description of the documents returned on the results page
support	Each result must contain one of the words from the list of words (support). Since there is only one word in the list, each result must contain the word support.
shuttle support mission	Each result must contain one of the words from the list of words (shuttle, support, mission). Documents that contain more of the words from the list will be ranked higher.
shuttle support -mission	Each result must contain one of the words from the list of words (shuttle, support). If there is only one word in the list, each result must contain that word. Also each result must not contain the word mission.
support +mission	Each result must contain one of the words from the list of words (support, mission). Also it must contain the word mission. In other words, it possibly may contain the word support but must contain the word mission.
shuttle support +mission	Each result must contain one of the words from the list of words (shuttle, support, mission). Also it must contain the word mission. In other words, it possibly may contain the word shuttle and/or/nor support but must contain the word mission.
+support +mission	Each result must contain the word support and mission.
support AND mission	Each result must contain the word support and mission.
support AND NOT mission	Each result must contain the word support but not the word mission.
support OR mission	Each result must contain one of the words from the list (support, mission).
support and mission	Each result must contain one of the words from the list (support, and, mission). Notice that and is a search term and not a conjunction because it is lowercased.
"support mission"	Each result must contain the exact phrase support mission.
support -"support mission"	Each result must contain the word support but must not contain the exact phrase support mission.
sup*	The asterisk is a wildcard. Each result must contain words that start with sup. This will obviously include the word support.
*port	Each result must contain words that end with port. This will obviously include the word support.
supp???	Each result must contain 7 letter words that start with supp.
mi??ion	Each result must contain 7 letter words that start with mi followed by 2 unknown characters and end with ion.
*DP*127?	Each result must contain words that start with zero or more characters, followed by DP, followed by zero or more characters, followed by 127, and then followed by exactly one character. The string KDP-KSC-P-1278 and possibly many more would match the search term and any documents containing one or more of these strings would be in the set of results.

Here are a few rules to remember when specifying search terms:

• The search terms are not case sensitive except that AND, AND NOT, and OR only work as search conjunctions if they are all uppercased. Using AND, AND NOT, and/or OR with more than two search terms is not recommended since one must consider the order of precedence of each of the conjunctions in the sequence. Use the plus and minus symbols when using more than two search terms. Also it is recommended that you do not use the wildcards (*) or (?) with any of the uppercase search conjunctions. The order of precedence will not be obvious.
• The plus and minus symbols are used to require or exclude search terms from the resulting entries, respectively.
• The asterisk (*) is used as a search term wildcard and represents zero or more characters.
• The question mark (?) is used as a search term wildcard and represents exactly one character.
• Multiple asterisks and/or question marks are allowed in the same word.
• Consecutive asterisks are not allowed but consecutive question marks are allowed as shown in the example above.
• Asterisks and question marks may be positioned anywhere in a word as long as they don't break any of the previous rules.
• The search engine currently limits the length of a single word (including Document Numbers) it can find to 120 characters. In the unlikely event that you need to find a word longer than 120 characters, simply type in the first 119 (or less) characters of the word followed by an asterisk (*) to locate the document containing the word.
• Finding documents by document numbers can be frustrating because of hidden underscores or dashes embedded in document number. Also some document numbers have revision numbers dotted to the end of the document number. For example, to find KDP 127-something, regarding hurricane preparedness, search using the document field with *DP*127*. The results should include the document numbered KDP-KSC-P-1278, the desired document.