Advanced search options and help

Mineral Planning and Waste Planning’s search allows simple single or multiple searches against our archive of articles. However, a few simple techniques allow you to get even more out of its search function.

You can create sophisticated searches using operators, which are special words used in the search/keyword field such as "AND" to ensure the search works in a specific way.

OR

This operator allows a search to return results that contain any of the search terms you provide. However it is the default and therefore you do not need to provide it. It will return articles that contain either of the search words.

Example: A search for waste OR mineral is the same as for waste mineral because the search defaults to the OR operator

AND

This operator ensures that all words occur in each of the search results

Example: You wish to search for articles that contain the words government and legislation – but not necessarily in that order or next to each other – just somewhere in the article.

Solution: Enter this into the keywords field: government AND legislation

+

The "+" operator ensures the term after the "+" symbol exists somewhere in each search result.

Example: You wish to search for articles that contain either the words mineral or extraction but always contain the word licence.

Solution: Enter this into the keywords field: mineral extraction +licence

-

The "-" operator ensures term after the "-" symbol DOES NOT exists anywhere in each search result.

Example: You wish to search for articles that contain the word mineral but must not contain the word aggregates.

Solution: Enter this into the keywords field: mineral -aggregates

NOT

The "NOT" operator excludes words that you do NOT want to be found anywhere in the search results.

Example: You wish to search for articles that contain the word mineral but DO NOT contain aggregates.

Solution: Enter this into the keywords field: mineral NOT aggregates

Phrases

If you wish to search against multiple words as an exact phrase, you can do this using double quote marks.

Example: You wish to search for articles that contain the exact phrase waste processing facility.

Solution: Enter this into the keywords field: "waste processing facility"

Combining operators – Advanced Searches

You can combine the operators above to create complex, grouped searches using parentheses.

Example: You wish to search for articles that contain the phrase waste processing and MUST mention East Sussex

Solution: Enter this into the keywords field: "waste processing" AND "East Sussex"

Example: You wish to search for articles that contain the phrase waste processing and EITHER  East Sussex or Hampshire

Solution: Enter this into the keywords field: "waste processing" AND (“East Sussex” OR Hampshire)