Important note: The search described here ONLY pertains to the educational and free editions of PBworks. If you are using PBworks for your business, in a Business Edition network, then your search benefits from being professionally indexed and being able to search for terms across workspaces.  Click here for more information about searching in your Business Edition network.

Basic Searching 

Every PBworks page has a search bar in the upper right region which allows a basic search of works pages and files.  Everyone who has access to the workspace has access to the search bar, however, the results will be tailored to their permission level.  If you put custom security on a restricted-access page, then that page won't appear in search results performed by users who haven't been granted access.

Searching inside files 

All the content of all the pages you create on PBworks will always be fully searchable.  The search will also cover the following kinds of uploaded files on premium workspaces:

Autocomplete

The search field also has an autocomplete feature installed which suggests content on your workspace as you type. 

When you first enter a letter all the pages which start with that letter will automatically appear.  If you see the page you want in this list, these pages can be clicked on directly.		As you type, the field gets smaller because the more you type, the fewer matches there will be.  This list was shortened as the search criteria went from "m" to "me".

Autocomplete can also find words that are within a file or page's name. For example, a search for "Trends," included the file result "Market Trends.xls".

Next to each autocomplete suggestion is an icon, indicating what kind of content it is.

Note: Tags do not appear in the autocomplete search box.

Icon	Type of Content
	Workspace page
	PDF
	Document
	Video
	Spreadsheet
	PowerPoint
	Audio
	Text File
	Image (small thumbnail of image content)

Search Tips

Note: The tips described below are only available in the educational edition of PBworks.  The search in our educational edition has an extremely narrow scope, as each workspace is only designed to hold a small amount of pages and files.

PBworks offers you a robust search engine. Use these search tips to narrow your results:

• A plus sign (+) before a word means it must be included in search results (eg: brown +cow returns pages that may or may not contain "brown" but must contain "cow")
• A minus sign (-) before a word means it must be absent in search results. (eg: brown -cow returns pages that contain “brown” but must not contain “cow”)
• Quotes ("") around a phrase returns that exact phrase (eg: "brown cow" returns only pages that include the exact phrase “brown cow")
• Also, search results are sorted by weight, which means that a page with many instances of a keyword will appear at the top of the list.
• The order of search keywords does not affect score / output.
• Adding "tag:foo" anywhere in the search box will constrain the search to only look at pages tagged "foo" (and their comments). You can't yet perform a search that will only look at pages tagged with both "foo" and "bar". (I.e., you can only search with one tag restriction at a time)
• Adding "folder:foo" anywhere in the search box will constrain the search to only look at pages in folder "foo" (and their comments). This doesn't yet apply to files in that folder. 
• Add "type:file" to your search inquiry to search just files, "type:user" to search by users, "type:pages" to search just within pages, or "src:" to search within the source code.