Search Help

The existence of all the words that you typed in the text box will be searched by default. Space separates the words. So if you specify two words, both of these words must be found in the Bible verse for Bible search or module page for other module types other than Bible. For example, wisdom God will return 41 entries in KJVLite.

Phrase search can be performed by enclosing the words in double quotes. For example, "Lord my God" will return 38 entries in KJVLite. But note that if you are using Standard search and there is Bible or HTML tag between words, they will not be matched so you have to use the other types of search.

Search type

  1. Standard
  2. Exact
  3. No accents (diacritics)
  4. Prefix and Exact (No accents)
  5. Regular expression (No accents)
  6. Full-text search (FTS) - Standard
  7. FTS - Exact / No accents
  8. Highlight
  9. Tags
  10. Format

Standard

The Standard type search is fast, does not require any special index that consumes additional storage space but searches on the raw content and thus the punctuation marks, HTML tags and other special Bible tags are included.

This is sufficient for the following cases:

  1. Simple search like one word or multiple words search
  2. Bibles without much tags like KJVLite or no tags at all like BBE
  3. Searching through translators' notes
  4. Languages not using accents or diacritical marks
  5. Strong number, morphological code and lexeme searchs

This is not suited for the following cases:

  1. Phrase search where a punctuation mark, HTML tag or Bible tag may separate the words
  2. Prefix only or Exact search
  3. Ignoring accents or diacritical marks

The Standard search is a string or contains search where the words searched are checked if they are contained in the verse (for Bible modules) or page (for other module types). So if you are looking for the word cry, it will match the words cry, outcry and crying.

You can exclude a word or phrase (NOT IN) by preceding the word or phrase with a hyphen (-). For example, understand -understanding will search for the verses with the word understand but without the word understanding

For Bibles with Strong's numbers like KJV, you can also search for Strong's number by preceding the number with H for Hebrew or G for Greek. For example, H2451. If the Bible also contained Morphological codes, you can also search for prefix of that code like N-GSM for OGNT which will also match N-GSM-P. And if there is embedded lexeme in the Morphological tag, you can also search for that, e.g. γένεσις for OGNT which will match γενέσεως of Mat 1:1 and γένεσις of Mat 1:18.

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Exact

The Exact, No accents (diacritics), Prefix and Exact (No accents) and Regular expression (No accents) types of search all use the same No accents index that will have to be created for the first time. If you have created one for Exact, MySword will no longer ask you to create another one for the other three types. The index is simply a copy of all the verses of the Bible (or the pages in other module types) but with all punctuation marks, HTML tags and Bible tags except Strong's stripped off and the words are separated by a space. The size of the database will almost double in case you have not yet created any index.

The Exact search is only available in the Deluxe version of MySword. It is suited for the following cases:

  1. Exact word or words search. For example, cry will only exactly match cry and not outcry nor crying.
  2. Phrase search. For example, "I am the Lord" will return 162 entries (but in Standard, only 1 entry because all other entries have the word am in italics, i.e., there are tags between the words).
  3. Exact search that ignores accents or diacritical marks

You can also exclude a word or phrase just like the case of Standard search.

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No accents (diacritics)

The Exact, No accents (diacritics), Prefix and Exact (No accents) and Regular expression (No accents) types of search all use the same No accents index that will have to be created for the first time. If you have created one for Exact, MySword will no longer ask you to create another one for the other three types. The index is simply a copy of all the verses of the Bible (or the pages in other module types) but with all punctuation marks, HTML tags and Bible tags except Strong's stripped off and the words are separated by a space.

The No accents (diacritics) search is actually designed to help searching through modules written in languages other than English and which use accents or diacritical marks like Spanish, Hebrew and accented Greek. It is suited for the following cases:

  1. No accents / diacritics search. For example, θεος will also match θεὸς in SBLGNT and the results also displays no accents for the sake of highlighting the match. (In Standard search, it will not match any verses because all occurrences of that word is accented; searching for θεὸς in Standard on the book of John returns 12, but in No accents, it returns 17 [John 20:28 has θεός, a different accent])
  2. Phrase search. For example, "I am the Lord" will return 162 entries (but in Standard, only 1 entry because all other entries have the word am in italics, i.e., there are tags between the words).

Note that this is still a string or contains search, so the word or phrase can be a prefix, suffix, or infix (contained inside a word). For example, cry will still match the words cry, outcry and crying. If you want to exclude suffix, you can try Prefix and Exact (No accents).

You can also exclude a word or phrase just like the case of Standard search.

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Prefix and Exact (No accents)

This is similar to No accents (diacritics) but excludes all suffix matches, i.e., only those matches that matches the beginning of the word are matched so exact words and prefix are matched. For example, cry will match the words cry and crying but not outcry as cry is a suffix.

If you want an exact search and you are using the Deluxe version of MySword, you can use Exact or FTS - Exact / No accents. But if you only have the Premium version or Free version of MySword, you can use the Regular expression (No accents).

You can also exclude a word or phrase just like the case of Standard search.

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Regular expression (No accents)

The Regular expression (No accents) search also uses the same index used by the Exact, No accents (diacritics), and Prefix and Exact (No accents). The Java/Android Regular Expression pattern matching is used on the app-side and not the database-engine side unlike the other search types so this is slower (4 to 5 seconds in Nexus 7 2012 edition searching ISV from Genesis to Revelations). But you can achieve exact search for example: \bcry\b will only match the exact word cry as \b is for word boundary. This search is intended for advanced users.

Note that space is still used as keywords separator so that \bwill of God\b means 3 regular expression tests (\bwill, of and God\b) where all must be matched. If you want to match a space for a phrase search, you will have to use \s (whitespace), e.g. \bwill\sof\sGod\b, or use . (dot matches any single character including whitespace) as a quick shortcut, e.g. \bwill.of.God\b.

Also note that the more complex the Regular expression is the slower the execution so please narrow the range of books.

Here is a list of other popular operators which you can use:

  1. | (pipe) for alternate (OR). For example, knowledge|understanding|wisdom will return verses that contain either knowledge, understanding or wisdom.
  2. ( and ) [parentheses] for grouping. For example, \b(wise|wisdom)\b will return verses that contain the exact word wise or wisdom.
  3. * for zero or more matches. For example, wisdom.*God will match verses that contain the word wisdom followed by God because .* matches zero or more characters (any because dot matches any character).
  4. + for one or more matches. For example, wisdom.+God will match verses that contain the word wisdom followed by one or more characters then followed by the word God. This will become more useful when used with \w
  5. \w for any word character. For example, will.\w+.God will match verses that contain the word will followed by any word then followed by the word God like will of God, will worship God and more.
  6. {n} for exactly n. For example, will\s(\w+\s){3}God will match verses that contain the word will followed by any 3 words then followed by the word God. Note that we used \s instead of the dot because the dot not only matches space but also non-space, otherwise we will have a different result (welcome to Regex programming :-).
  7. {n,} for at least n. For example, will\s(\w+\s){3,}God will match verses that contain the word will followed by any 3 or more words then followed by the word God.
  8. {n,m} at least n but not more than m. For example, will\s(\w+\s){0,3}God will match verses that contain the word will followed by zero to 3 words then followed by the word God which is similar to the Full-text search (FTS) NEAR/3.

Here is the complete Regular expression syntax.

The Regular expression search does not support word/phrase exclusion.

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Full-text search (FTS) - Standard

FTS uses a specialized database index useful for fast search similar to Google search. The size of the database will more than double in case you have not yet created any index.

The FTS - Standard is available only in Journal and encrypted modules for all versions of MySword and Premium and Deluxe versions of MySword for other module types like the Bible.

Here are tips regarding the use of FTS search:

  1. Root word kind of search just like the search engines (Google, Yahoo, etc) reducing the need to use Boolean OR:
  2. All search are prefix root only search so that search key ear will not match bear or hear.
  3. "Phrase search" is better as in between punctuators, HTML tags and Bible tags are ignored. But note that it is still not an exact search due to word stemming. If you want exact, you can use FTS - Exact / No accents which do not use word stemmer and is useful for other languages.
  4. Boolean OR is supported (must be capitalized in order to distinguish from search key or).
  5. Proximity/nearness search
  6. Word exclusion, NOT word using -

You can also exclude a word just like the case of Standard search but FTS does not support phrase exclusion.

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FTS - Exact / No accents

The FTS - Exact / No accents uses a separate specialized database index similar to Full-text search (FTS) - Standard but not using the Porter Stemmer, thus exact matches. You can enjoy all the benefits of FTS listed above but only exact word matches are allowed. This is very useful for exact phrase search and for non-English languages.

The FTS - Exact / No accents is only available in the Deluxe version of MySword.

You can also exclude a word just like the case of Standard search but FTS does not support phrase exclusion.

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Highlight

The Highlight search is available only in Bible search. For this search, the keyword text box is ignored. This is useful for looking up verses where you placed a specified highlight.

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Tags

The Tags search is available only in Bible search and searches the tags added by the user including the icons, text and adhoc notes. For this search, the search keyword is used only for the notes added in the tag. You can leave it blank if you just want to lookup for an icon or tag text.

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Format

The Format search is available only in Bible search and searches the formats added by the user like bold, italic, underlined, highlight, color and box color. For this search, the search keyword is not used.

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