Search for text or accession number matches (Entrez)

The Entrez Search wizard is used to search a text query or accession number against NCBI’s Entrez databases for nucleotides or proteins.

To launch the Entrez search dialog, choose Search > Text Search in > NCBI Nucleotide or Search > Text Search in > NCBI Protein. For shortcut to these commands, see The Welcome screen.

The Visual view is displayed by default and is described below.

*Note: The Visual view is only for non-nested queries using the same type of operator (AND, OR). To perform a more complicated search, press the Text tab near the bottom left corner and create the search in the Text view.

1. Use the <select> drop-down menu to choose a criterion. The field headings vary depending upon the online database that you are using. Choosing All fields will cause the application to search every word of every listing for the query term in the database.
   
   
   
   Once you make a selection, a second drop-down menu and an empty text box appear to the right.
   
   
   • In the second drop-down menu on the row, choose contains or doesn’t contain (see image below).
     
     
   • In the text box, type the text that should be found in any results (in the case of contains) or should not be found in any results (in the case of doesn’t contain).

2. To add another criterion, press the plus icon (). To delete a criterion, press the minus icon ().

3. Once you have set up all desired criteria, go to the top of the dialog and choose whether to Match all of the following or Match any of the following criteria.

4. To learn about the optional tools in the bottom left corner of the screen, see the bottom of this topic.

5. Click Run to send the query to the database. To instead exit the dialog without searching, press Cancel.

During the search, a progress dialog is displayed. Once the search is completed, any matches are displayed in the Jobs panel.