If I search for something in the help I get many results that are not what I am looking for.
 
For example, I enter "Markers" and get results for anything that's similar. In this case, I have a list of about 200 results.
Working my way through 200 results to find what I am looking for is time consuming.
 
First, is this a Sonar or a Windows Help system issue?
And second, is there way to tell the Help system to find ONLY the entered character sequence?
 
I tried using quotes but that doesn't work.

Online or local manual? Local is a PDF and should not exhibit that behavior.

No, the Help. Click on Help menu, select any topic - What's New, for example - the windows Help dialog pops up.
Then select the third tab in the control and enter something to look for.
 
But good hint, thanks, I'll use the PDF manual in future.

I usually start my search on the index page using the text search function of the browser. The pdf is over a year out of date.

I agree about starting with Index because it looks for broad topics, whereas Search looks for words inside topics...and yes, you can get a bewildering number of returns, unless the search is for something very specific.
 

Type this into your browser's address bar:
 
site:forum.cakewalk.com markers
 
That is, use Google to do your search. Won't help you in the Help section, but it lists each thread with "markers" in the title or post. If I can't find something in Help quickly, this forum is a really good secondary Help system.

I almost gave up doing searches directly on the Help, due this prolix return.
I have had better luck with google ...

+1 on index as a starting point.
 
If I DO use Google, I use something like:
 
site:cakewalk.com sonar documentation markers
 
For searching forum content, I would use:
 
site:forum.cakewalk.com markers
 
Bob Bone
 
 
 

It is possible to perform a google search inside the CW website and look only at the current documentation. Enter the search words in the box in the upper right and select the appropriate documentation, here the current documentation is selected.

I still prefer using the index.

would be nicer without all those ads!! https://support.google.com/customsearch/answer/70354?hl=en