Xera: Searching Documents for Empty Fields

Empty fields in your XERA databases have no value. To capture empty fields in your search criteria, you can use the Empty Fields search option in the Custom search, or use the Empty Fields syntax.
**If you are working on a SQL Server database, a NOT search on a Limited Text field will return empty fields.
Empty Date and Numeric Fields
Empty numeric and date fields are zero-filled; less than searches can retrieve fields that are empty.
For date search details (including how pre-1900 dates are searched), see Date Range or Proximity Search.
Empty Limited Text Fields
When searching for empty Limited Text fields, add Empty field syntax.
Examples:
EquiSet is Empty
Author is Empty
Searches where Empty Field Syntax is not Required
The following searches do not require empty field syntax:
*WITHIN searches: A Within search is treated differently than an Equals search, as follows:
*(‘John Smith’ WITHIN Author) — Returns all documents where the Author field contains the phrase ‘John Smith’.
*NOT (‘John Smith’ WITHIN Author) — Returns all documents in the database except documents where the Author field contains the phrase ‘John Smith’. This includes documents where the Author field is empty.
*NOT search: a not search excludes all documents except the search criteria specified, so empty fields can be returned.
Document level
*‘John Smith’ — Returns all documents that contain the phrase ‘John Smith’.
*NOT ‘John Smith’ — Returns all documents in the database except the documents that contain the phrase ‘John Smith’.
Field level
*NOT (‘Document Date’ > 2003/10/07) — Returns all Document Date fields in the database except where the Document Date is greater than 2003/10/07.
*NOT (Author = ‘John Smith’) — Returns all Author fields except where the Author is John Smith.
*Folder searches: folder searches are done at the document level, so empty fields are not a factor.
*|General|Hot Documents| — Returns all documents in the Hot Documents folder.
*NOT |General|Hot Documents| — Returns all documents in the database except the documents found in the Hot Documents folder.

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