The focus of this help article is to introduce you to searching SEC filings with directEDGAR. We can very quickly get into the weeds because of all of the ways that our platform allows you to build searches and work with the output of those searches. But let us focus here on just the basics of a search

Step 1 – Select the appropriate Index Library

We organize our archive of SEC documents by the name of the filing and the time the filing was disseminated through EDGAR. The list of filings and their related time periods are available in the Library section of the application. You can use the small scroll bar on the right of the listing to scroll through those that are available to select one or more of the index libraries that are relevant for your search.

Hitting the Zoom button next to the Library name (directEDGAR_ACCOUNTING) will pop out the index listing to make it a little easier to review the archive listing. This list will automatically reflect any new filings collection each time the application starts.

For this first search, I want to search all documents in the Proxy Y2023-Y2023 archive for any that have the phrase Audit Committee Met. So I need to scroll down to the appropriate index select it using the checkbox and hitting the OK button if I have selected it using the Zoom control.

Step 2 – Build the Search

Our search system is designed to parse the contents of the Search Phrase box to identify relevant documents. Thus, to access any documents you have to enter at least a word or phrase (Note, if you just want the system to return all documents in the archive, rather than conditioning the results based on a particular word or phrase enter the term XFIRSTWORD into the Search Phrase box). Since we are searching for the phrase audit committee met with out setting any filters or constraints we just need to type that phrase into the search box as illustrated below and then hit the Perform Search button:

Step 3 – Complete the Search

The application will parse your search phrase, apply it to the underlying document index, identify the documents that met your search criteria and then RETRIEVE the documents that met the criteria and load them into the Search Results panel. For each document the application will apply hit-highlighting to the results and load the document in the Document Panel at the first instance of your search phrase.

Step 4 – Review the Results

The controls above the document that is listed in the Document Panel allow you to navigate through the document in various ways. If you select the Open Document control, the original document will open in the native application for your instance appropriate for that document type. The Next Hit and Previous Hits controls will navigate through the current document to the instances of your search words and phrases. Finally the Next Document and Previous Document controls will load the next or previous documents into the Document Panel.