Click [Legislation Database] on the homepage to enter the Individual Section Mode.
Before searching, you should first of all make your choice in the Selection Menu. For instance, if you want to search for sections of Sub. Leg. that contain a certain word, you should click [Sub. Leg.] in the Selection Menu and then click the [Enter] button.
When the List of Laws at the right frame displays what you have just selected, you can then click the [Simple Search] button in the menu of [List of Laws].
At the menu of [Simple Search], the current selection of Laws will be displayed at the upper part of the right frame. If the selection is not what you want, you should repeat steps 2 and 3.
If the current selection of Laws is correct, you can then enter the word(s) that you want to search.
You can enter more than one word by adding the "and", "or", "and not" operators.Examples - If you want to search for sections that contain both the word "ship" and the word "boat", enter: "ship and boat" at the input field. If you want to search for sections that contain either the word "ship" or the word "boat", enter: "ship or boat". If you want to search for sections that have the word "ship" but do not also have the word "boat", enter: "ship and not boat". Be careful, however, when using the "and not" search function. For example, if you want all documents that refer to the Chief Executive but you do not want documents that refer to the Chief Executive in Council and you enter "Chief Executive and not in Council", then a document that contains both "Chief Executive" and "Chief Executive in Council" will also be omitted. If you need to find all relevant documents, you have to use the "and not" function carefully.
Proximity operators (i.e. "sentence" and "paragraph") are also supported. That is, you can search for words that are found in the same sentence or paragraph within a section.
Phrase Search - if you enter more than one word not separated by operator words, you will find only sections that contain that exact word combination. It is not possible to search directly for hyphenated words. For example, instead of searching for "air-conditioning" with the hyphen, search for "air conditioning" as a phrase without the hyphen. If you need to include, within a phrase, operators such as "and", "or", "and not", "sentence" and "paragraph", you must enclose the operator word in quotation marks. For example, a search for ships "and" boats will find only the phrase of the 3 words.
You can use wild card characters in your search word to search for word variations. The question mark (?) and asterisk mark (*) can be inserted into search terms to substitute for a single letter (?) or one or more letters (*). Thus a search for [mar?] will produce [mark] but not [market] whereas a search for [mar*] will give both and others. The marks can be used in combination and anywhere but the beginning of the search word.
You can also choose the maximum number of sections to be retrieved. The default number is currently set at "25". If you choose a large number, it will take longer to display the result if there are many sections that contain your search words.
When you have entered all the search criteria, click [Search] to retrieve the list of sections fulfilling the search criteria.
The sections that contain your search word(s) are displayed in order of relevance. That is, the section that contains the most search words is displayed first.
You can then click on the title to view the content of the section.
You can use the [Edit/Find] function of your browser software to highlight the search words in the retrieved section.