Searching Te Ara

The Te Ara search engine will find words and phrases within Te Ara entries and the 1966 Encyclopaedia. It will not search the Further Sources pages.

The Search box

Typing words into the Search box at the top of any Te Ara page and clicking on the Search button will bring you to a results screen. This presents the findings divided according to whether your results occur in Te Ara text, the Images & Media, the Biographies, the 1966 Encyclopaedia, or other websites published by Manatu Taonga.

By default, the search engine will look for pages which contain all the words you type.

The search engine will also find some words related to the words you type. For example, if you search for ‘present’, it will also find ‘presented’ and ‘presenting’.

Advanced searching

You can use the following methods to refine your search:

  • Cabbage and tree: use and to search for pages containing two or more terms. This is the default search method.
  • Cabbage or tree: use or to search for pages containing either one term or another.
  • Cabbage tree: use double quotes to search for phrases.
  • Cabbage -tree: use a minus sign (-) immediately before a term to exclude the word.
  • You can combine these methods in a single search, e.g. cabbage treeand flower or foliage -diseases.

Results in context

The search results page will display your search terms highlighted within the context of the surrounding words on the page where they are found.

However, only exact matches for the terms will be highlighted.

The Te Ara search ignores macrons and other accents. You can find words by typing them with or without macrons or accents.