Effective search strategies
These are some ways in which you can get more accurate search results with less work:
Do not search for overly common words or names. Make sure each search term is at least 3 characters long (search terms shorter than 3 characters are omitted). Only enter enough of each word make it unique enough to find relevent matches.
For instance, searching for 'Wes' might not be a good idea (it will match West, Western, Wesley, Westpac, Westrail etc), but if you are looking for 'Westrail' typing 'Westr' may well be enough and saves a few keystrokes.
When used on several search terms for instance, searching "Wes Ban Corp" would be enough to locate Westpac Banking Corporation without typing the entire name (which takes more time and introduces the chance for typos). Right-click on tick boxes such as 'Client' or 'Member' and choose "select this type only" to rapidly unselect all the other tickboxes. This saves you the effort of having to untick many checkboxes on the display. Use the tick boxes and filters to reduce the number of results that are returned - in any case, ContactsLaw will only return at most 100 results. Use the advanced options on any search (accessed by clicking the bar labelled 'Advanced search' to be very specific in the criteria that your search uses. If you are having difficultly locating a record, try enclosing the search term in double-quotes.
Remember that, once you see the contact you are looking for, if you are simply going to make a phone call, create a letter or compose an email, you can do so by right-clicking on the contact in the search results. |