You must be in Search mode before you can search for a legislative file. Click Clear at any time to return to Search mode.
Text Search
The Text Search searches through the text entered into a file’s text section. Clicking on the Advanced Search button gives you much greater flexibility than a normal keyword search. This is achieved by using And, Or, and Not statements.
The simple search looks for a word or consecutive words and displays all the legislative matters that have text files matching the search criteria. Users may further define the search by indicating whether to search the current text file or previous versions.
To display a specific file, use the Go to File button at the top of the screen, or, double click the Legislative File number displayed.
Searching with Advanced Full Text Search
Click Search on the left side of the Legistar interface, then click Advanced Search (see figure below).
Advanced Search
Enter your search terms using the six boxes at the top of the screen, which are defined below:
AND Search: If you want your search results to contain two search words, not just one or the other, use the first two boxes.
OR search: If your desired search results should match either of two search words, use boxes three and four.
For search results that match a search word regardless of what you’ve entered in boxes one through four, enter it into box five.
NOT search: Any word entered into the last box will eliminate all files containing that word.
Click Search in the left corner. If you wish to open a file in Legislative Files, double click on that file.
For example, the search shown below would return results containing both "police" and "car" with either the word "new" or "purchase", as long as the file does not contain the word "truck".
Sample Advanced Search
Searching with Simple Search
Enter the keyword in the Search Text field.
Click Search to run the search.
Enter search terms into any of the Workspace fields in the Files module; these could include the File ID, Type, Status, In Control, File Created, Title, Agenda Date, and Final Action.
You can also enter text in the EZ Text Search field. EZ Text only searches through all legislative file text fields; dropdown and date fields are not searched. For example, when searching for the word "park" this will pull forward anything with the word "park" in it. It will pull forward results such as "parking", "parking lot", "Braves Ballpark", etc. In reverse, when searching for "parking lot" anything with the words "Braves Ballpark", "park", and "parking" will be populated. In this particular case, when using multiple words to search, it is a Best Practice to use the Advanced Search.
TIP: Enter an asterisk* after your entered search text to locate all files that contain the entered characters. For example, enter 11-02* to search for files 11-021, 11-022, 11-023, and so on.
Browsing for Legislative Files
The Browse button serves as a valuable tool for reviewing your entire database’s legislative files.
Click Browse.
Browse Button
Enter the dates in which the legislative file may have been introduced. You can also click the calendar button to select dates.
Click Go.
Select the desired legislative file from the list.
