Search refined by child tags

CB

Here's an English expressions of a search I'd like to do:

"All top-level items of a certain type which don't have a child item (eg. note or link) tagged with X"

I can't see a way of doing this, but my search needs are generally very simple so my explorations into that arena have been brief.

erazlogo

This doesn't seem to be possible with advanced search. The easiest way to achieve this is to have certain tags apply to child items only, then create a saved search on the tag and check "Include parent items of matching items." Name the saved search, say, "tagged children with parents." Then do a search on collection="tagged children with parents" and item type="book" to find books with children with this tag. Unfortunately, if you use the same tag on parent items those parents will show up in results.

In theory, nested search on various saved searches would have produced the result you want:

1. item type="attachments" OR item type="notes" (saved search = "children")
2. collection="children" AND tag="some tag" + "Include parent items of matching items" (saved search = "tagged children with parents")
3. collection="tagged children with parents" AND item type="book"

But this doesn't work--if someone explains to me why this shouldn't work I'd be very grateful.