Signals Notebook: Quick Find minus operator requires a positive term

Description

Users observed that entering only a negated term (e.g., -apple) in Quick Find did not exclude items as expected. 

Cause

Quick Find’s text search requires at least one positive token with a negated token (e.g., apple -banana). The minus operator is used to find documents that contain one term and not another. Single-term negation may work in other filters (e.g., contents filter) but is not supported in Quick Find.

Solution

- In Quick Find, include at least one positive term with the negated term (example: apple -banana).
- If the minus sign is part of the query value, wrap the query in quotes as needed (example: "apple -banana").
- Do not use a standalone negation in Quick Find (example: -apple) because it will not return only items without that term.
- If you need to exclude a single term without specifying a positive term, use the contents filter where single-term negation is supported.
- Refer to product documentation for text search operators and examples.

Example

I have "Apple" and "Banana". If I search by "apple" these are my results:
 

 
 
But if I search for "apple -banana" these are the results:
 

Now, if I search for "-apple" (without the positive statement) actually returns something that has "apple". Here is a screenshot:

Conclusion

The use of a minus operator to negate a term in text search requires a positive term to exist, it returns items that contain this but not that. It cannot be used in isolation to only return items not containing a given term. This is described in the user guide, where the negation operator is described thus "The minus operator is used in text search to find documents that contain one query term and not another"