The local database can be searched by clicking on the folder you wish to search, then clicking the Search icon (
) in the top right of the toolbar. Enter the desired term(s) in the text field and press enter or click the Search button. Once a search starts the document table will initially be emptied, then results will appear in the table as they are found (see Figure 4.1
). The Search button changes to a Cancel button while a search is in progress and this may be clicked at any time to terminate the search. Feedback on a search progress is presented in the status bar directly below the toolbar.
To exit the search window and return to browsing click the orange X in the search options bar, or press the Escape key while the cursor is in the search text field.
Important: You must use quotation marks (“”) if “!”, “@”, “$”, and blank spaces (“ ”) are part of your search criteria. No quotation marks lead to unreliable results.
Geneious remembers previously searched keywords and offers an auto-complete option. This works in a similar way to Google or predictive text on your mobile phone. If you click within the search field, a drop-down box will appear showing previously used options.
When you are looking for all matches to a partial word, use the asterisk (*). Asterisks can be placed at the beginning, end or in the middle of a word. For example, typing “oxi*” would return matches such as oxidase, oxidation, oxido-reductase, and oxide. Searching for CO*I would return matches for COI and COXI. Similarly, you can use a question mark ’?’ to represent any single character. This feature is available only for local documents and not NCBI or UniProt searches.
