Whenever you open a new resource in Accordance, you’ll see an asterisk entered in the search entry box. Why is it there?
To understand the purpose of the asterisk, you must first understand that in Accordance, everything is a search. What you have entered in the search entry box of any resource window will determine what you see in that window’s display pane. Enter a book name in a Bible window with Verses selected, and you’ll see that book, and that book only, in the display pane of the window. Do a word search, and you’ll see only those verses which contain that word.
If everything in Accordance is the result of a search, you need an easy way to display the entire contents of a book or Bible. Now you know what the asterisk is for. Any time an asterisk is entered in a Bible window with Verses selected, the entire search text is displayed from beginning to end.
Why don’t we just make you enter a range of books like Genesis-Revelation rather than using an arcane asterisk symbol? Well, for one thing, it’s a lot easier to enter an asterisk than to type the names of a first and last book. More importantly, what do I do when I open a corpus I’m not that familiar with, like the Dead Sea Scrolls or the works of Philo? If I don’t know the first or last book off the top of my head, there’s a chance I might enter the wrong books and end up viewing only a portion of those texts. The asterisk is a quick and easy way to say “show me everything” no matter what text I’m working with.
If you’ve been doing a series of searches and you just want to get back to viewing the entire text, it’s easy enough to click the Verses button and type the asterisk, but an even easier method is simply to double-click the Verses button. Do that, and the asterisk will automatically be entered and the search window updated to show the entire text.
Now that you know what that asterisk symbol is there for, I’ll use the next several posts to show you what else you can do with it.