Even if you have used Logos for years, this article will jump your Logos 8 searching to a whole new level and save you time. Not search correctly is like reading the wrong page of a book.  You may have the information you need and think you do not have it or that it does not exist only because of an poor search.  Searching well lets you give you best to your ministry.

 

The yellow highlights are actions. This is the most hands-on of the tutorials.  Read it. If it is new to you – do the search. Copy and paste the search terms, they are underlined. Things that can be changed in the search are bold. Other bolded items are name of things or menu options.

Logos help says that the simple single word is the most commonly used searches. I agree that you can go a long way with a simple search, but as soon as you run a search and get hundreds of results you must trim it down. A person wants to get past the simple search and zero in on the information they need.

A simple search

This is a search to try in your Logos, you will see many of this as this is hands on:

Bible Search all Bible Text in all passage in English Standard Version for Angel

This finds every time the word “angel” used in the ESV Bible. Did it find only angel, or did it also find angels? There is a menu in the search panel to search “Match All Word Forms” When this is checked, it will get the plural, singular, and other forms like the tenses of a verb (run, running, ran). In the same menu you can tell it to “Match Case” this tells search whether or not to pay attention to the capitalization of your search terms. Maybe you want to search for “God“ and not get “god”. While this search for angles is active click the Bible Graph icon on the Menu Bar and try out the different views it has.

Searching with “OR” and “AND”

Sometimes angels seem to be called watchers so we can search for both watcher and angel with the

Search for watcher OR angel to find all angels.

Why is it OR rather than AND? (notice that OR & AND are capitalized.  All search operators are capitalized.)

“OR” will list the verse if it contains either “watcher” or “angel”.

“AND” will list the verse only if both “watcher” and “angel” are in the same verse.

In the search-Panel-Menu select “Match all word forms” and click re-run the search.

Bible Search all Bible Text in all passage in NASB95 for watcher AND angel (3 verses)

This is easer than (watcher OR watchers) AND (angel OR angels)

In the search-Panel-Menu deselect “Match all word forms” so it will only find the exact words again.

What if the terms are close to each other but in different verses?

The above search will not find it. In fact “Bible search” will not cross verse boundaries. It will only compare the search terms against the words of a single verse at time. Try NEAR or WITHIN x words: x is a number and “words” is not capitalized like WITHIN is.

Also view the verses in “Verses” view. (it is in the menu just above the search results “grid|Verses|Aligned|Analysis”).

Let’s do a different search now, try angel NEAR Lord, also try angel WITHIN 4 words Lord. The search for angel WITHIN 4 words Lord found fewer verses than the search for angel NEAR Lord did. That means NEAR is at least more than 4 words apart.

What if we want to get only verses for “angel of the Lord” instead of verses for “angel.” A person could try angel AND LORD but that may get unwanted verses so an exact phrase search is better for this.

Search for “angel of the Lord” 

Notice the quotes around phrases are included. The quotes are necessary for an “exact phrase” search. Without the quotes Logos will treat it as a shortcut for “AND”. Searching for angel of the Lord (without quotes) is the same as searching for   angle AND of AND the AND Lord. There is also a shortcut for “OR” angle OR of OR the OR Lord. It would look like   angel, of, the, Lord. The words are simply separated by commas.

What if I am studying angles but not “The Angel of the Lord”. I can use the “ANDNOT” operator.

Search for (watcher OR angel) ANDNOT "of the Lord"

Notice the parenthesis works just like in math. They tell Logos search to do “watcher OR angel” first and then the ANDNOT operator. Otherwise the results would show all occurrences of watcher and only show angle when “of the Lord” is not also in the verse like this search would    watcher OR (angel ANDNOT "of the Lord")

Now do a Bible search All bible Text in New Testament in NASB95 for (angel NEAR Lord ) ANDNOT "angel of the Lord"

Only one verses is found. (Acts 12:11) Now do the same search again but as a “Basic” search this time. Only one verse is found but this time it is Rev 19:16. Look closely and notice “Lord” is in verse 16 and “angel” is in verse 17. This is how to search the Bible and cross verse boundaries. But what happened to Acts 12:11? Shouldn’t it still be listed in the results. One would think so, until they notice Acts 12:7 has “angel of the Lord”. The verse boundary crossing goes both ways. You can find more verses but you can also loose some depending on your search. Lets try a double negative.

Do the same Basic search with
(angel NEAR Lord ) ANDNOT ("angel of the Lord" ANDNOT "an angel of the Lord")

That found more verses in the NT but it still did not find Acts 12:11. [This seems to be an anomaly. Even a Basic search for   (angel AND Lord) does not find Acts 12:11, but it should.]

Try these and view the verses in the “Aligned” view and scroll through the results to see the different results.

Search All text in All Passages In ESV

Search for house WITHIN 3 words door           (21 results)
Search for house WITHIN 3 words door*        (39 results)
Search for house WITHIN 3 words door?         (33 results)

“*” is a wild card for 0 to many characters, ? is a wild card for 0 to 1 character.

A shortcut for AND-ing several words is to have a list separated by a space in parenthesis.

Search for (merciful gracious love anger) The parenthesis are not needed unless you are doing a more complex search with other operators like AND, NEAR, WITHIN, OR etc.

Searching for (merciful, gracious, love, anger) is the same as (merciful OR gracious OR love OR anger) Separating the words with commas equals “OR”-ing them:

Now lets try Basic search

Change Bible to Basic by clicking the button or menu.

Search All Text in All Passages in The Creeds of Christendom for conclusion

You should have 45 results in 39 articles in 3 resources.

Mouse over one of the resources and right-click|expand-all

Now you can see all the results.

Change All Text to Heading Text by clicking on All Text and checking the box beside Heading Text.

Search Heading Text in All Passages in The Creeds of Christendom for conclusion

Expand all again. Now you can see all the results are only 3 results in 3 articles in 2 resources. We have found where the author presents a summary section under the heading conclusion. This kind of a search is useful when searching encyclopedias and dictionaries. Anything that has headings will work well with this kind of a search. In the list that dropped down when you changed to Heading Text you saw the other options available to search such as footnotes and titles. Searching titles for “Jesus” found captions under pictures in many kinds of resources including media and courseware. This is one way to narrow down a search to zero in on what you are after.

Most of the time a person finds get too many results that are not relevant. Sometimes a person does not get enough results. This is when the panel menu’s items “Match all word forms” and “Match equivalent references” can be helpful. Otherwise we can try adding more parameters to make the search tailored to our needs.

Search All Text in All Passages in Handbook of Christian Apologetics for Resurrection      (154 results)

Let’s assume we are interested in what Hume said about the Resurrection.

Search All Text in All Passages in Handbook of Christian Apologetics for Resurrection AND Hume (2 results)

We see how the number of results has reduced dramatically.

Search All Text in All Passages in How to Read Genesis for faith (25 results)

This is a manageable amount of results. One could easily read the results to find what one wants. Click one of the results and notice that the search terms are highlighted in the commentary to help you find it quickly. If you click the “heading” you go to the heading and may have to scroll to find the search terms. If you click on the highlighted search terms in the search results it goes directly to the search term in the resource.

But lets assume we want to see if it mentions Hebrews 11, the faith chapter.

Search All Text in All Passages in How to Read Genesis for faith AND <Hebrews 11> (2 results)

Notice how to search for a Bible reference “<reference>”

Try these Basic searches:

<Hebrews 11>   looks for reference to all of chapter 11
   <Hebrews 11:3>   Looks for a reference to Hebrews 11:3 only
   <Heb 11:1-5>         Looks for a reference within the range from Heb 11:1 to Heb 11:5 inclusive.

Now try the searches as Bible searches (0 results) This is because a Bible search does not search the Bible references, but only the text. If you click on “All Bible Text” and look at the available search fields, there are only two. In Basic search clicking on “All Text” reveals a list of the available search fields.

We have seen how to search for a Bible reference and noticed that the bible references are highlighted in the resource while they match a search. This is useful. I like to do a search for the verse of interest in all open resources.

Basic search All Text in All Passages in All Open Resources for <Jn 3:16>

Then it is highlighted and easy to find in anything I am looking at. This is especially useful when looking through a Lexicon entry to see if a verse is referenced without doing a specific search of the resource for the verse.

 

The Milestone search:

Search Logos help for Milestones to understand what they are. Notice the Milestone is always capitalized in the search. (Capital M)   {Milestone <verse reference>}

Basic Search All Text in All Passages in The New Bible Commentary for {Milestone <Gen 3:15>}

Click on the search result and notice that the commentary is highlighted on the section that meets the search criteria. This helps you to zero in on the part to read.

Now switch to a Bible search

Search All Bible Text in All Passages in New American Standard Bible: 1995 for {Milestone <Gen 3:15>}

Then try

Search All Bible Text in All Passages in All Bibles for {Milestone <Gen 3:15>}

To find Ps 2:7 and the 3 NT verses that quote it

Bible Search All Bible Text in All Passages in All Bibles for {Milestone <Ps 2:7>} OR {Milestone <Heb 1:5>} OR {Milestone <Heb 5:5>} OR {Milestone <Acts 13:33>}

Note: the shortcut of using a space for “AND” or a comma for “OR” between search elements will not work for this.

This search is useful if you would like to copy or print out a few verses together without creating a “Passage list”. It also lets you compare the quoted verse and the 3 NT quotations of it all together.  It may be useful with viewing synoptic gospel parallel verses also.

If you would like to add the results of a search to a passage list go to the “Panel Menu” and select “Save as Passage List”.

To print search results, from the “Panel Menu” select Print/Export. A Passage List can also be printed.

Now change the view to Analysis View.

Right click the “Panel tab” and choose “Open in a floating window” (Ctrt-F11) You may still need to slide the horizontal pan bar at the bottom of the window to see everything.  Check out the panel to see what it shows you in this view.

Now right click the “Panel tab” and choose “Dock this tab” (Ctrl-Shift-F11) and the panel will return to where it was before.

One last Milestone search to show a range of verses. {Milestone <Jn 3:12-17>} A wider range yet would be {Milestone <Jn 2-3>}

The Milestone search is good for finding the section of a commentary that discusses the passage of interest. It will highlight the entire matching section so you can find it quickly and know what to read.

 

Intersect, Superset, and Subset searches.

Now search Logos help for "Match any reference that" to read about intersect, superset, and subset.

Notice there are no curly brackets like as Milestone had. Here we use the <> brackets to enclose the statement.

The Milestone search searches the Milestone index of resource like Bibles and commentaries. It does not work with Lexicon heading words yet. The intersect, superset, and subset searches do look at the Bible references in the text instead of and indexes Milestone uses. These results of these searches will highlight the Bible references in the resource when it is opened so you can find them easily.

The help file shows the search parameter as <Bible intersect “bible ref”> but Bible is not necessary. <intersect Jn 3:16-17> works fine. This is true of all three of these search parameters. Intersect will find results for references that lie within the range, equals the range or encompasses the range or partially over laps the range on either end. This is useful when you are interested in a range of verses but the some commentaries divide it up slightly different. For instance, everybody’s outline seems to be different.

Superset only finds Bible references that encompass or includes the entire range. <superset psalm 1-4> will match Ps 1-50 but not Ps 2-50. This is useful when you want to find discussion on a larger section of a text as a whole.

Subset will find Bible references that are equal to or within the reference range, but not anything that extends beyond the range. This is useful for when you know the range you want to look at and are not interested in comments that group it more broadly.

 

We have searched in several different resources.

What about searching our entire library?
Basic search All Text in All Resources for __________

Or a search of only resources already open.
Basic search All Text in All Passages in All Resources for __________

Or only searching your notes, clippings, or passage list.
Basic search All Text in Your Documents for __________

Or a search of a collection from the library.

Basic search All Text in My Collection for _____________

 

Searching Notes

The Notes Panel has two areas for searching. They have different purposes and are fairly intuitive.

A person can also search a resource for a particular highlighting. This may be useful for review or for in-line search.

 

Searching Original Languges

In Logos Help Find (in this Panel)     Lemma lemma:λόγος (Morph Search) From there a person can scroll down to find information about searching in the original languages.

If you have Logos Language Keyboards installed, you can rotate through them in windows with Shift+Alt or you can use the keyboard selector located on the right end of the search bar. You can still do a lot without typing Greek or Hebrew by coping and pasting. A tip for pasting Hebrew is to enter the English part. Then paste the Hebrew where it goes. This keeps the English part of the command from interfering with the Hebrew. Probably the same for Aramaic. It is the right-to-left writing that messes things up and this will avoid the problem.

From an original language Bible or a translation with and associated interlinear, one can right-click on a word and do a several kinds of searches through the menu.

Bible search All Bible Text in New Testament in NASB95 for <Lemma = lbs/el/λόγος>

Morph Search All Bible Text in New Testament in NASB95 for <Lemma = lbs/el/λόγος>

Now insert the cursor at the end of the line in the search Bar and type: @

This drops down a window to enter in the “Part of Speech.” Noun works good for this word so chose that. Other choices are available now and you can choose them as desired. You can choose multiple items in each column if desired.

Morph Search All Bible Text in Old Testament in NASB95 for <Lemma = lbs/he/ רֵאשִׁית >

Now insert the cursor at the end of the line in the search Bar and type: @NCFSA? This specifies a Morpholopgy to search for.

Morph Search All Bible Text in Old Testament in NASB95 for <Lemma = lbs/he/ רֵאשִׁית >@NCFSA?   ?= wild card.

 

Inline search.

This is done in the resource panel.

Go to the Logos Help file and click the tab to activated it if it is not already active.

In the Panel Menu show Inline Search (Ctrl+Shift+F)

The inline search bar opens up and becomes visible.

Type “inline search” (with quotes) in the search window and press enter.

Notice in the upper right hand corner of the Logos Help Panel there is a button that will say either Article, Paragraph, or Sentence. Set it to Article. With these settings the Logos Help is only showing articles that contain the phrase “Inline search.” There are two articles before the Inline search article. At the top is the Resource Panel Menu article. The second paragraph it in is on Find (in this panel). That is what we will cover after inline search. To the right of the button that we just set to Article is the Icon with an upward pointing arrow. It is the share button or send to button. Click it and look at the menu options. Now select “Search Panel.” This opens up a search panel with the same search as is in the inline search panel. There is an x to close the inline search panel next to the share button. You can also close it using the Panel Menu. You can also inline search Bibles. You will discover several ways to do it.

 

Find (in this Panel).

Find is available via the Panel Menu (Ctrl +F)[ Cmd+Shift+F (Mac)]. It is quick and easy to use. I use it frequently. It finds the nearest incident of the search term and highlights it. You can search forward or backwards. If the term is not found it turns red. You can work your way through a resource with this search to find each incident of the search term and read the larger context than the Search Panel provides.

Another kind of search

You may not think of this as a search when you are using it. It is really navigation. But how many times have you clicked on a verse and your Bible jumps to it and then you sit there trying to remember where you were. Maybe it is worse in a lexicon if you can’t type the word. The Back and Forward Arrows on the Resource Toolbar move you through the Panel’s location history. This allows you to find the place you had been before.

Exit the Inline Search in the Logos Help Panel.

Click the Back Arrow to find the places you were from when you did searches in it earlier.  That is it search remembers your search history.

Click the dropdown arrow to the right. This opens a dropdown menu showing the 29 most recent locations you have been at in that resource.

 

Next: Search Where The Information Is.