Please review our Advanced Search help guide to see Boolean Operators in action.
Boolean Operators Video
What Are Boolean Operators?
Boolean operators help to narrow your search and provide you with the most optimal results. The operators are: AND, OR, AND NOT, and OR NOT. Changing these operators between your criteria cards will help you create productive and meaningful searches to find the contacts you are looking for.
'AND' Operator
You are looking to target potential voters that are male Republicans. To get your preferred results, use the AND operator and include the search terms "Male" and "Republican".
'OR' Operator
You want to identify potential voters that are male, Republican, or male Republicans. Use the OR operator and the search terms "Male" and "Republican" to pull these results.
'AND NOT' Operator
You are trying to identify unaffiliated male voters and would like to exclude Republicans from your search. Use the AND NOT operator to search for males that are not Republican.
'OR NOT' Operator
You would like to generate a list of records that contained anyone who was male and anyone who was not Republican. For example, this list would include all males regardless of affiliation, but it would only provide non-Republican female records.
Grouping
Grouping refers to combining two or more criteria cards together. In the following case, we have combined home owners and teachers using the OR operator. Essentially, we are looking to find a list that includes people who own a home or teach as an occupation.
Home Owner OR Teacher
Nesting
Unlike grouping, nesting allows you to use several operators. Notice in the example below that the AND operator is used outside of the grouping that uses the OR operator. While in the grouping you can just identify home owners or teachers, nesting allows you to get even more specific and narrow your search to a particular location.
California AND (Homeowner OR Teacher)
The outcome of the search will be combined in the following way:
From the diagram, you can see that the results are:
Any person who lives in California and is a homeowner is included.
Any person who is a teacher and lives in California is included.
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