How to Search in HeinOnline
From the Welcome Page
The welcome page is a great way to kickstart your research and see what’s available across all your subscribed content.
ONE-BOX SEARCH
HeinOnline’s one-box search on the welcome page includes a series of options that appear in a drop-down allowing you to specify your search intent. Let’s explore each of these options.
- Just search for searches the full text of documents for your keyword or words. Users can also use this option to enter custom HeinOnline syntax. From the HeinOnline welcome page the Just Search for option searches across all your subscribed content.
- Author searches for a section author name. This is also a great way to easily pull up an author’s profile page.
- Title searches section titles across HeinOnline documents.
- Citation allows users to quickly pull up a document or case from HeinOnline or Fastcase using its citation.
- Catalog searches across the entire HeinOnline catalog, including MARC21 records.
Click the search help link to see a list of commonly used search syntax.
If you are a seasoned researcher, check out our Advanced Search Syntax Guide for more in-depth searching options.
DATABASE SELECTOR TOOL
If you want to search within a specific database or databases, use the database selector tool located on the HeinOnline home page. For example, let’s search for the phrase “employment equality” and the word women within the Law Journal Library and Women and the Law database. Choose the desired databases from the selector tool.





ADVANCED SEARCHING
Select the Advanced Search link to open up three advanced search options.





From Within a Collection
Once you enter a specific database, the just search for option within the one-box search only searches within that collection. For example, enter the U.S. Congressional Serial Set to see the text within one-box now says Search U.S. Congressional Serial Set.
The Advanced Search link will change to options relevant to that database. Rather than Search HeinOnline, users can now search specifically in this collection.
Let’s search for all House and Senate reports relating to the Americans with Disabilities Act from the year 2016. Add this phrase into the keyword option from the drop-down menu. From the section type, select uncheck all and then select house and senate reports. Finally enter 2016 into the date range.
Use the icons listed above the search results to modify your search, search within results, or expand all matching text pages.
Open the first result about bathroom accessibility and see if this report includes anything about baby changing facilities. Use the magnifying glass within the image toolbar to search within the section, page, or volume for a specific keyword or phrase. Let’s search for baby OR babies.
From the results page, select turn to page to see our matching keywords within the text. Choose the second result.
HeinOnline will highlight your keyword or keywords in green on the page to make searching even easier!