To search a book or document, click the magnifying glass icon in the right panel, or press Cmd+F (on Mac) or Ctrl+F (on Windows).
Perusall will only show results that match all the search terms you enter. Enclose phrases "in quotes" if the phrase must appear exactly. Place the vertical bar (|) between terms if only one or the other must appear in the search results.
In the resulting search panel, you can use syntax similar to that of a web search; enter a list of words and Perusall will return all pages or sections with any of those words. Perusall also supports a few additions:
- Place a
+between words to only return pages or sections that contain all of the words - Place a
-before a word to only return pages or sections that do not include that word (e.g.,dog beagle -pug) - Wrap a phrase in double quotes (e.g.,
"chain rule") to search for that exact phrase - Use a
*at the end of a word to return pages or sections that start with that word (e.g.,math*would match "math" or "mathematics" but not "polymath")
If you're unable to search within a document (such as a PDF uploaded by your teacher), it may be because the document scan lacks OCR (Optical Character Recognition), preventing Perusall from recognizing the underlying text or metadata. If instructors need assistance with applying OCR to PDF's, they can view this article.
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