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Advanced search tips

  • Enter words that you want to find separated by spaces, e.g. climbing lane
  • Use OR (in capital letters) where you don't mind which word, e.g. commons OR lords
  • Use quotes when you want to find an exact phrase, e.g. "Liverpool City Council"
  • status: to select based on the status or historical status of the request, see the table of statuses below.
  • variety: to select type of thing to search for, see the table of varieties below.
  • requested_from:home_office to search requests from the Home Office, typing the name as in the URL.
  • requested_by:julian_todd to search requests made by Julian Todd, typing the name as in the URL.
  • commented_by:tony_bowden to search annotations made by Tony Bowden, typing the name as in the URL.
  • request: to restrict to a specific request, typing the title as in the URL.
  • filetype:pdf to find all responses with PDF attachments. Or try these: csv txt pdf rtf doc docx xls xlsx ppt pptx oft msg tnef tif gif jpg png bmp html vcf zip delivery-status
  • Type 01/01/2008..14/01/2008 to only show things that happened in the first two weeks of January.
  • tag:charity to find all public authorities or requests with a given tag. You can include multiple tags, and tag values, e.g. tag:openlylocal AND tag:financial_transaction:335633. Note that by default any of the tags can be present, you have to put AND explicitly if you only want results them all present.
  • request_public_body_tag:charity to find requests to public authorities with a given tag.
  • Read about advanced search operators, such as proximity and wildcards.

Table of statuses

All the options below can use status or latest_status before the colon. For example, status:not_held will match requests which have ever been marked as not held; latest_status:not_held will match only requests that are currently marked as not held.

status:waiting_responseWaiting for the public authority to reply
status:not_heldThe public authority does not have the information requested
status:rejectedThe request was refused by the public authority
status:partially_successfulSome of the information requested has been received
status:successfulAll of the information requested has been received
status:waiting_clarificationThe public authority would like part of the request explained
status:gone_postalThe public authority would like to / has responded by postal mail
status:internal_reviewWaiting for the public authority to complete an internal review of their handling of the request
status:error_messageReceived an error message, such as delivery failure.
status:requires_adminA strange response, required attention by the WhatDoTheyKnow team
status:user_withdrawnThe requester has abandoned this request for some reason

Table of varieties

All the options below can use variety or latest_variety before the colon. For example, variety:sent will match requests which have ever been sent; latest_variety:sent will match only requests that are currently marked as sent.

variety:sentOriginal request sent
variety:followup_sentFollow up message sent by requester
variety:responseResponse from a public authority
variety:commentAnnotation added to request
variety:authorityA public authority
variety:userA WhatDoTheyKnow user