Search help

Introduction

You can search for any word or phrase on the site (including the content of our publications).

To carry out a search, enter your search text in the space provided and click the Search button. A list of the documents that match your request will be returned. To view a document in the list, click on the link.

Search options

If you enter more than one search word, you can choose how they are used in the search

all of the words will only retrieve documents that contain all your search terms - although words may not appear together
any of the words will retrieve all documents that contain at least one of your search terms
the exact phrase will only retrieve documents that contain all your search terms in the order specified

In an any of the words search, you can also use + in front of any word or phrase that is required, and - before a word or phrase to exclude it. For example, defence -flood might find reports on the Ministry of Defence but not on flood defences.

Boolean searching

A Boolean search request consists of a group of words or phrases linked by connectors such as and and or that indicate the relationship between them. If you select Boolean search, you can use the connectors in the following ways:

defence and flood
Both 'defence' and 'flood' must be present
defence or MOD
Either 'defence' or 'flood' can be present
defence and not flood
Only 'defence' must be present

Wildcards (* and ?)

A search word can contain the wildcard characters * and ?

A ? in a word matches any single character, and a * matches any number of characters. The wildcard characters can be in any position in a word. For example:

financ* would match finance, financial, etc.
wom?n would find woman and women

Further information

For more detailed help, please see the dtsearch FAQs.

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