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Select Your Topic
Using filters
Narrow your search results using the filters on the left side of the page. Each filter will remove results from your search that don’t match the filter you’ve selected.
You can use more than one filter at once; if you limit your results to military records, for example, you can also filter by location and date.
When filtering by location, selecting a region will produce a list of smaller areas within that region. For example, after selecting
United Kingdom
from the Filter By Location list, you’ll see a list of smaller locations, and after selecting one of those, you’ll see a list of counties. To filter by date or language, select a decade or language from the lists on the left.
Using Wildcards characters in searches
Wild cards are symbols used in place of unknown letters in a word. They can be used in searches when you don't know an exact spelling. Use wildcard characters as comparison criteria for text filters, and when you're searching and replacing content. These can also be used in Conditional Formatting rules that use the "Format cells that contain specific text" criteria. Wildcard characters cannot be used in place of the first letter of a word or within an exact phrase search, and words roots must contain at least three letters preceding a wild card.
A question mark (?) represents 1 character.
For example, if you didn’t know whether a name were spelled Nielson or Nielsen, you could do a search for the name using a wild card where the unknown letter goes: Niels?n.
An asterisk represents 0 to 5 characters. If you wanted to search for different spellings of the name Matthew (like Mathew and Matthiu), you could do a wild card search that would find each different ending: Mat*.
For example, behavior* finds behavior, behaviorist, behaviorism, behaviorally, etc
Allows you to find terms that are within a set number of words of each other. In Basic Search, use the tilde (~) symbol followed by a number to set the desired proximity.
For example, your search will return results with the terms debt and forgiveness within ten words of each other. So, whereas a search for "debt forgiveness" within quotation marks will give you search results for that exact phrase, a search for debt forgiveness~10 will give you results that include both the words "debt" and "forgiveness" within 10 words of each other.
In Advanced Search, use the Boolean drop-down boxes to combine search terms with NEAR 5/10/25. The NEAR operator looks for the combinations of keywords within 5, 10, or 25 words places of each other.
Wild card rules
- All searches containing wild cards must contain at least 3 non-wild card letters. For example, *ill would work, but *ll would not.
- The first and last character in a search can't both be wild cards. Searching *ohnson and Johnso* would work, but *ohnso* would not.
- Wild cards don't work with Soundex matches. Soundex is an algorithm used to search for alternate spellings of a name, using the way the name is pronounced.