Tips for Faster Searches

Access is designed to help you quickly locate individual securities; it is not intended for 'screening' the database. Ideally, searches should execute quickly and return a minimum number of securities to choose from. There are a few techniques you can use for description searches to help achieve these two goals:

• Enter specific Issuer criteria. The closer you can come to entering criteria which identify the specific Issuer you're looking for, the faster the search will be. Many of the other tips below are suggestions which can help you do this.
• Use 'Starts With' names or Issuer Numbers if possible. Issuer names usually begin with full words, not abbreviations. For states, CUSIP (not postal) state abbreviations are used other than at the beginning. E.g. the Issuer name for a New Jersey state issuer begins with 'NEW JERSEY'; a Newark, New Jersey Issuer name begins with 'NEWARK N J'.
• Specify both Issuer and Issue criteria if you have them. The more specific you can be, the faster the search and the smaller the number of results.
• Use meaningful words in 'Issuer Name Contains' searches. Many Issuer names include words or abbreviations such as 'CNTY', 'CORP', 'INC', 'OF' and 'ST' which occur frequently in the database but usually don't help much in identifying a specific Issuer. Avoid them if you can. If the Issuer name includes a frequently-occurring word such as 'BANK', 'FEDERAL' or 'INTERNATIONAL', include other, less-common word(s) as well. Finally, you should avoid two very common abbreviations, since they apply to multiple words - CO (Colorado and company/companies) and IND (Indiana and industry/industries); use the full word instead.
• Specify Issue dates or rates where possible, rather than words from the Issue description. Access checks every Issue for each Issuer which meets your criteria; date and numeric comparisons are faster than text comparisons.
• Use fewer words in 'Issue Description' searches. When you must enter Issue description and 'but not' criteria, Access checks for single words faster than for multiple words. Unlike words in 'Issue name contains' searches, using 'meaningful' words doesn't affect search speed, although it may reduce the number of results returned
• Specify update dates where appropriate. This may not affect the overall speed of the search too much, but it will probably reduce the number of Issues returned. This will make it easier (and faster) to isolate the one you're looking fo
• Don't try to use Description searches for Mortgage pools. Use the Mortgage-pool input fields on the ID Search screen instead.