Exact vs. Flex Search

There are two types of Words searches: Word and Flex.

• A Word search finds the exact word or phrase entered in the Search Entry box.

• A Flex search finds all verses containing English grammatical forms, plurals, and singulars of all words rather than exact phrases (unless excluded by quotes). For example, a search for "forgive" would find "forgive," "forgiven," and "forgiving."

  When performing a Flex search, anything in quotation marks is treated as an exact search. In this way you can combine a Flex and Word search.

The default search is Word, but you can change this in the Search Tab area of the Preferences dialog box.

To perform a Flex Search, do one of the following:

• In the Search Entry box, click the Search pop-up menu and choose Flex. Then perform a Flex search for the desired word or phrase.

• Select the word in the text you want to search for. Right-click and choose Search For>Word (Flex) from the shortcut menu Also known as a contextual menu, acessed by right-clicking (or pressing Ctrl+Click, Mac only) over a screen element that appears. The search is automatically performed and the hit words The verses, words, text, or other information found as the result of a search are highlighted.

  If your search includes words in parentheses such as (Adam, Eve), the Flex search is applied to these words as well.

The picture below shows an Exact search (blue circles) in comparison to a Flex search (orange circles) for the same word. Note the increased number of hits with a Flex search, and the different forms of the word found.