Completing an Advanced Search

Modified on Mon, 23 Jun at 4:18 PM

In this article:

Performing an Advanced Search
Considerations for Performing an Advanced Search
How-To Video

In Practice Management, an Advanced Search lets you search documents, matters, contacts, Knowledge Base content, or emails. (A regular quick search simply searches matters and contacts.)

TIP: If you need to print and share the results of your advanced search, consider using the Conflict Check Report, which displays results in a better format for printing.

Performing an Advanced Search

To perform an advanced search:

In Practice Management, click More in the main menu and choose Advanced Search, followed by the type of information you want to search for: Documents, Matters, Contacts, Knowledge Base, or Email. The Advanced Search page appears with a list of metadata around your search type.
TIP: You can also start typing in the global search box and then choose Advanced Search.
On the Advanced Search page, enter your search terms in the box and click Go. Any items matching your search type are listed in the results list. (The following example shows a Documents search.)
To further refine your results, use the options along the left side of the page.
EXAMPLE:
For example, if you are searching your Documents list for a Personal Injury PDF with Invoice in the title, select your personal injury matter type in the All Matter Types list, select Document Names under All Contexts, and choose pdf from All File Types. (To clear these filters again, click the section title, All [Filter Name].)
Click the link for the result you want to view. To clear any filters you've applied, click the section title for that filter:

Considerations for Performing an Advanced Search

Please note the following regarding how the Advanced Search in Practice Management works.

Email Attachments

Email attachments will not be returned in document searches unless they have been moved or copied to the matter's Documents list. Otherwise, email attachments can be searched and found using the email client's search functionality.

Permissions

Permissions apply to the results you see in the Advanced Search. For example, if you do not have permission to see a matter then you will not see it as a result in any Advanced Search. The same applies to any documents or emails on a matter you do not have access to.

Searching Content of Documents

Practice Management's conflict check feature will search the content of all the documents in your system but keep the following in mind:

Practice Management monitors the first 2 MB of data within a document. Files that contain text content larger than this will be mostly but not fully checked by Advanced Search. (In most cases, documents stored in your system are typically less than 2 MB in size.)
The Advanced Search function works only on text-based documents. Image and video files will not have their content searched (though names, metadata, etc. will be).
Scanned documents will likely be treated as images regardless of what format they are stored in.
Documents that are stored in a document integration will not be included in an Advanced Search. (Practice Management integrates with NetDocuments, Box, Google Drive, and Dropbox.) These integrations allow you to access documents in those products from your matter but an Advanced Search in Practice Management will not include those documents.)