ChemFinder.Com > About ChemFinder.Com > ChemFinder & ChemINDEX > Instructions General Searching Instructions for Simple Search Form The Simple query form of ChemFinder is designed to make it as easy as possible to locate common types of chemical information. You may enter a chemical name, formula, molecular weight, or CAS Registry Number. ChemFinder will identify the type of search you want, and provide the hits accordingly. To view in ChemDraw or Chem3D the chemical structures of the compounds you find, you will need to download ChemDraw Plugin and Chem3D Plugin and use the Plugin version of ChemFinder, which offers more precise control over search terms as well. Name Name searches will look for your standard chemical names, such as '1,4-dimethylbenzene' or 'cyclobutadiene'. An asterisk (*) serves as a wildcard, allowing the creation of "name starts with", "name ends with", and "name contains" searches. For example, '*benzene' will match '1,2-dichlorobenzene'. ChemFinder is very tolerant of typographic variations in names. All of '1,2-dichlorobenzene', '1 2 dichlorobenzene', and '1.2dichloro benzene' (and many others) will match '1,2-dichlorobenzene'. Even more-complicated variations will be recognized: 'acetic acid, sodium salt' is a perfectly reasonably search string for 'sodium acetate'. 'Cupric chloride' will match 'copper (II) chloride' and so on. This intelligence is far from absolute, but it should greatly increase the chances of your finding the information you want on the first try. Formula Formula searches are, foremost, case insensitive. 'c6h6' works as well as 'C6H6' and 'c6H6'. It is possible to enter an ambiguous formula ('cooh' is interpreted as 'COOH', not 'CoOH'), so if you have problems, use proper capitalization. Formula searches also support ranges of elements. A query like 'C6H0-5Cl1-6' will find all chlorinated benzenes (and possibly a bunch of other stuff as well). It is perfectly reasonable to use zero in a range. A query like 'c4h10o0-1' will find both butane and butanol (and possibly other stuff). Note that not all structures in the database currently have chemical formulas assigned. Molecular Weight MW searches understand significant digits, so a search for 'MW is 100' will find all compounds whose molecular weight is > 99.5 and < 100.5. Note that not all structures in the database currently have molecular weights assigned. CAS Registry Number CAS Registry Number searches attempt to locate a substance by its Chemical Abstracts Service Registry Number. The standard format for a CAS RN is xxxxxx-xx-x, but ChemFinder will recognize the same number as valid even without the dashes. Leading zeroes are optional. Since the last digit of each CAS RN is a built-in checksum, ChemFinder is able to recognize many of the more common mistypings. ©2004 CambridgeSoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Privacy Statement Email   / Tel  1 800 315-7300 / 1 617 588-9300     Fax  1 617 588-9390     EU Tel  00 800 875 20000 / +44 1223 464900     EU Fax  +44 1223 464990     Germany Tel  +49 69 2222 2280     France Tel  +33 1 70 71 98 80 CambridgeSoft Corporation, 100 CambridgePark Drive, Cambridge, MA 02140 USA CambridgeSoft Corporation, 1 Signet Court, Swann's Road, Cambridge CB5 8LA UK All trademarks are the property of their respective holders.