The Washington Post offers two ways of searching our archives: simple and advanced. On these pages, you will be charged to read the full text of stories; you will not be charged to search. This archive only contains stories older than 14 days. To read the past 14 days' worth of stories for free, go to the washingtonpost.com search page.

Before You Search

To search our archives, you do not need to set up an account. However, to read the full text of an article, every user needs to establish an archives account. This archives account is completely separate from other accounts on washingtonpost.com, such as discussions. The account includes identity and payment information, which will be kept confidential. If you don't have an archives account, when you select "Click for complete article" (in your search results) you will be asked to register an account or purchase a single article.

Also, before you search, make yourself comfortable with our fees and copyright restrictions on the use of articles.

If you have a question about washingtonpost.com's archive that is not answered in this help guide, please e-mail us at webnews@washingtonpost.com.

If you have already set up an account but are having trouble using your correct user name and password to retrieve articles, you can send an e-mail to washingtonpost@newsbank.com or call 1-800-896-5587 for assistance. Please note, however, that operators cannot help you find articles within the archive or answer questions about stories that ran in The Washington Post.

Using Simple Search

1. Enter your search terms
Enter as much information as you know about the article into the "Headline," "Author" and "words in article" boxes.

For the "Headline" and "Author" boxes, you can enter phrases to match, or use the Boolean words "AND" and "OR" to construct phrases.

For example, typing "Marion Barry" will return all articles that mention the name Marion Barry, with the words in that order. Typing "Marion OR Barry" will return all articles that mention people named Marion, people named Barry, or Marion Barry. Typing "Mayor AND Washington" will return all articles with those two words in them, not necessarily next to each other.

In the "words in article" box, you can choose to have the Post archives match all of the words you have entered, any of the words you have entered, an exact phrase, or you can use the Boolean words "AND" and "OR" to refine your search.

For example, choosing "Clinton vacation" with the "Match any of these words" button checked will turn up all articles about Clinton -- and all articles about people taking vacations. Choosing "Clinton vacation" with the "Match all of these words" button checked will turn up all articles that mention both Clinton and vacations. This gives you fewer stories than the previous search.

Choosing "Clinton vacation" with the "Match this exact phrase" button checked will turn up all articles that have those two words in that exact order. This gives you the fewest stories of all.

If you check the "Boolean terms (AND, OR)" button, you can use parentheses and complex phrases like Clinton and (vacation or 'Camp David') to get the most exact searches.

It's often best to try several searches and evaluate the results before retrieving the full text of articles (for which there is a charge).

2. Select a range of dates to search
Choose whether you want to search a range of dates. The pop-down menu under "Date of Article" offers common time periods, such as "Within 60 days" or "1991." Or, you can choose specific dates to search between. To select more than one year, hold down the command key (Mac) or control key (Win) while selecting.

3. Execute your search
Press the "Search" button to see the results of your search. You will not be charged to see the results listing; after the trial period, you will be charged to read the full text of stories. Press the "Reset" button to clear the search form and start a new search.

Using Advanced Search

1. Enter your search terms
Enter up to three words or phrases for which you want to search. Using the pop-down menus below the search box, you can specify whether your words or phrases should appear in the headline, byline, first paragraph, or anywhere in the story. Connect your phrases with the "and", "or" and "not" buttons.

Enter as much information as you know about the article into the "Headline," "Author" and "words in article" boxes. You can enter the exact phrases to match, or use the words "AND" or "OR" to construct phrases. The more terms you specify, the more exact your search will be.

It's often best to try several searches and evaluate the results before retrieving the full text of articles (for which there is a charge).

2. Select a range of dates to search
Choose whether you want to search a range of dates. The pop-down menu under "Date of Article" offers common time periods, such as "Within 60 days" or "1991." Or, you can choose specific dates to search between. To select more than one year, hold down the command key (Mac) or control key (Win) while selecting.

3. Order your results
Choose how many matches to display per page and in what order you want them displayed. "Most recent first" and "Oldest first" will show stories in date order. "Most relevant first" will show stories in the order of how many times your search terms appear in the story.

4. Execute your search
Press the "Search" button to see the results of your search. You will not be charged to see the results listing; after the trial period, you will be charged to read the full text of stories.

Troubleshooting

If your search yields no matches, you may be able to change your search terms to find what you're looking for. Periods are not recognized by the search engine (in abbreviations, for instance), but you can substitute spaces where periods should be in order to find what you're looking for. So instead of searching for P.T. Barnum, you would search for P T Barnum to find those articles.

If your search yields too many matches, adding a modifier can reduce the results to a manageable level. For instance, searching on the term Clinton results in too many matches to list, but Clinton AND foreign policy narrows the field.

If you get a syntax error or another unexpected result, you may be using words that are reserved for administrative use in the database. Some of these are: byline, caption, column, copyright, correction, date, disclaimer, edition, enhancement, headline, illustration, lead, length, lines, memo, name, page, publication, rest, section, series, source, subject, tag, text, and type. If your search includes one of these words, you need to select the "match this exact phrase" button to get the right results.

If you want to search for an exact phrase containing one of the special words mentioned above, but don't want to use the "match this exact phrase" button, you can put two single back ticks (the lower case character in the upper left portion of the keyboard next to the number 1) on each end of the term or terms you want to search for exactly and choose the "boolean search" radio button. So you could search for Yankees and ``world series`` with the "boolean search" radio button selected to find articles that contain the word Yankees and the exact phrase world series.