Grouping & UnGrouping Search Terms (Create Lists)

Owned by Tammy Poquette, created
Last updated: Nov 01, 2021
2 min read

You can create search criteria hierarchies by grouping your search terms. You can also ungroup criteria hierarchies as well.

Table of Contents

Grouping Search Terms in Create Lists

  1. Create a Hierarchy: The system creates a hierarchy of search criteria by grouping your search terms. Once you have specified three or more rows of search terms.

  2. Select the rows to group by highlighting multiple rows with your cursor. You must select at least two rows to create a group. Terms that belong to a group must be adjacent.

  3. Choose Group. Sierra places parentheses around the search terms you selected.

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Groups Multiple AND/OR Search Sequences for Better Results

You must group multiple AND/OR search sequences to ensure that Sierra returns the results that you want. Ungrouped AND/OR searches are prone to ambiguous interpretation. Although the search might run, the results might not reflect what you were searching for.

For example, consider the interpretation of "black and white or gray" versus either "black and (white or gray)" or "(black and white) or gray". With grouping, even a more complex search such as "((black or red) and white) or gray" can be interpreted clearly. With grouping, you can be confident that you are getting the records you want.

  1. Specify your search criteria for the first term.

  2. Choose Append Line to add a search term to the end of the search term list. Choose Insert Line to add a search term before the selected term. The system searches for terms in the order that they appear in the table.

  3. In the Operator cell of the new search term, choose "and" or "or." The cell's Operator defaults to "and."

  4. Specify the criteria for the new search term.

  5. To continue adding terms, repeat the process beginning with step 2.

  6. Group the search terms as appropriate.

  7. Begin your search by choosing Search.

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Ungrouping Search Terms

  1. Select the grouped rows.

  2. Click Ungroup. Sierra removes the parentheses around the search terms

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