How To: Use the "NOT" Boolean Operator
Sometimes, the term you're searching for may be fairly generic, and you may get a long list of search results that may require a lot of additional sorting effort.
Boolean search i.e. searching with AND, NOT, OR & NEAR (all capital) between two search terms can help refine your search.
Use of the "NOT" Boolean operator:
Suppose we want to find murder cases where a knife is not involved. We start by navigating to the regular word search page.
![](https://storage.crisp.chat/users/helpdesk/website/5a383c1a-a14c-4df2-9963-ad669a13fbb4/eb7f42d6-1bdd-4645-80f9-a314413bac72.jpeg)
In this example we are trying to search for the term ‘Murder’ in judgments/reports except for documents where the term 'Knife' is mentioned. The search term we use for this purpose is "Murder NOT Knife". It is also a must that in the radio buttons adjoining the search box, the 'Boolean' option must be selected for this to work.
![](https://storage.crisp.chat/users/helpdesk/website/b5559a67-e33c-4ff8-9bf3-1d30a0e4eb4a/fd9fbec2-a3d3-4836-8d30-681de05d7084.jpeg)
The result screen now displays the documents related to your search with greater accuracy and requires lesser manual sorting.
![](https://storage.crisp.chat/users/helpdesk/website/1b86b921-e970-411a-91f7-1ae2600bec40/a649528d-5f9d-4f51-b29a-d759b726522d.jpeg)
Boolean search i.e. searching with AND, NOT, OR & NEAR (all capital) between two search terms can help refine your search.
Use of the "NOT" Boolean operator:
Suppose we want to find murder cases where a knife is not involved. We start by navigating to the regular word search page.
![](https://storage.crisp.chat/users/helpdesk/website/5a383c1a-a14c-4df2-9963-ad669a13fbb4/eb7f42d6-1bdd-4645-80f9-a314413bac72.jpeg)
In this example we are trying to search for the term ‘Murder’ in judgments/reports except for documents where the term 'Knife' is mentioned. The search term we use for this purpose is "Murder NOT Knife". It is also a must that in the radio buttons adjoining the search box, the 'Boolean' option must be selected for this to work.
![](https://storage.crisp.chat/users/helpdesk/website/b5559a67-e33c-4ff8-9bf3-1d30a0e4eb4a/fd9fbec2-a3d3-4836-8d30-681de05d7084.jpeg)
The result screen now displays the documents related to your search with greater accuracy and requires lesser manual sorting.
![](https://storage.crisp.chat/users/helpdesk/website/1b86b921-e970-411a-91f7-1ae2600bec40/a649528d-5f9d-4f51-b29a-d759b726522d.jpeg)
Updated on: 24/10/2018
Thank you!