FIND BOX & LOOKUP
At the 'Find' box you may enter a simple lookup request, yet powerful search facilities are available to you - so most address lookups can be done here.
Enter your lookup request, then click the Lookup button - use the shortcut key [Alt]+L - or simply press [Enter]. If your lookup request ends in a postcode this is detected, and AFD Postcode Plus will automatically carry out a lookup for you without the need to click Lookup.
Note that only the Lookup Button can be used with the Find Box - the Search Button is used with other searches on the Search Tab.
For the fastest results, with minimum typing, enter a postcode, with some information - such as an organisation name or building which makes it unique.
Entering a postcode such as
| 'B6 7HS' | Returns multiple businesses to look through | |
| 'Royal Mail, B1 1AA' | Returns just one |
AFD Fast Find also works when you don't include the comma and deals with simple misspellings.
Clicking on the down arrow to the right of the Lookup box allows you to select any of your last 25 Lookups. After selecting one, make any modifications necessary, and then click on the Lookup button.
Where you are not sure of the postcode, Postcode Plus can easily find addresses from other delivery information - including Organisation Name, Property, Street Address and most STD Codes:
Valid entries include:
| Entry | Example | |
| Postcode only | B6 7HS | |
| Postcode with | Royal Mail, B1 1AA | |
| Delivery information | Blyth Hall Farm,b462af | |
| Organisation | Somerfield Somerfield, B14 7BW |
|
| Organisation & Town | Boots,Halesowen | |
| Property | Hollies*, B78 3RF 28, B3 1PW |
|
| Property & Town | Alpha Tower, Birmingham | |
| Street Address | 22 Suffolk Street | |
| Street Address & Town | 41 High Street, SUTTON COLDFIELD | |
| Street Address & Partial Postcode |
2 WALSALL ROAD,B42 | |
| UDPRN (Unique Delivery Point Reference Number) | 00326704 |
Click the Lookup Button or press the [Enter] key and Postcode Plus will look up the request you've entered. You will see from the examples above, that Postcode Plus is quite tolerant of how spaces are used and whether capital or lower case letters are used.
Postcode Plus will detect postcodes or phone numbers which have been re-coded and will convert them to their replacement postcode or phone number before looking up and displaying the results.
Lookups with Town, Locality or County
For many address lookups, especially for common addresses, it will help to provide slightly more information, by including a comma, then (in order of preference) Post Town, Locality or County.
| Organisation | Pizza Hut,Bradford | |
| Property | Abbey Mill, Hampshire | |
| Street Address | 21 High Street, Bromley |
Typing errors and delimiter insertion
AFD's Fast Find helps you find the correct address by attempting to spot simple typing errors in the address you enter as well as detecting non comma-separated fields and inserting the delimiters for you when carrying out the lookup. For example, the following lookups will all return results from the 'Find' box:
Example Notes Royal Mail B1 1AA Missing comma between Organisation name and Postcode 4 b47lg Missing comma between house number and Postcode Comercil Street Birmingham Missing comma between street name and town name and corrected spelling of 'Commercial Street'. Divad Street Mis-spelt 'David'. After looking for possible matches returns approximate matches. BI ZAA Mis-typed postcode. BI corrected to B1 and ZAA corrected to 2AA to lookup:
B1 2AAFast Find is optimised to ensure that the required match is not obscured by approximations. Therefore if an entry correctly matches an address or the address could be correct but not in PAF then non-exact matches will not be returned. If you cannot find the address you require you should check the spelling or, if taken over the phone, ask it to be spelt out to you if the postcode is unknown. Fast Find works to help reduce the amount of manual checking needed. Please note that Fast Find is always faster when the delimiters (commas are included in the find string specified).
Possible match types, shown in the Postcode Plus status bar, used by the Fast Find feature are as follows:
- Matched Postcode
- Changed Postcode
- Matched Addresses
- Matched including postcode correction
- Matched inserting field delimiters
- Approximate Matches Found
Postcode Plus contains support for alias localities. These are localities which are not part of the postal address but may be given as part of an address and so can be used to help find addresses were the postcode is unknown. For example a lookup of "Clay Lane, Gilbertstone' will find Clay Lane in Birmingham which is in the Gilbertstone locality. Gilbertstone itself is not part of the correct address. It should be noted that these localities are only known to sector level, and so some address may be returned which are not in the locality searched for. As these alias localities are not part of the correct PAF address and the correct one for a particular address is not known they cannot be included as part of the address returned, however you can view all the localities in the same sector as the selected address by switching on the 'Alias Localities' option from the Postcode Plus 'View' menu.
For even better results, and faster performance, Postcode Plus has a series of special control codes which help with lookups and searches:
| Code | Example | Purpose | |
$ |
$Meadow Foot Rd | 'SOUNDS LIKE' - used when spelling is uncertain. | |
+ |
*Nursing Home* |
Search for fields containing the enclosed words, ignoring any spaces. |
|
| +Nursing Home+ | Search for fields containing the enclosed words, obeying any spaces . | ||
| *Nursing Home |
Search for fields ending in the words specified, ignoring any spaces. |
||
| +Nursing Home | Search for fields ending in the words specified, obeying any spaces. |
Postcode Plus is able to interpret most lookup requests correctly - and deliver the information you require without any special help. Some address information may, however, be ambiguous - and present in several different parts of addresses. To assist in these cases - and to speed up many lookups where Postcode Plus would otherwise have to find the address you are looking for by trial-and-error - a series of directive codes is provided.
| Directive | Example | Purpose | |
| O= | O=Royal Bank | Forces lookup as an Organisation | |
| P= | P=Gigg Lane | Forces lookup as a Property | |
| S= | S=Jacoby Place | Forces lookup as a Street | |
| L= | L=Aston | Forces lookup as a Locality | |
| T= | T=Birmingham | Forces lookup as a Town |
The above examples, along with several others, are available from a special Examples List window, which displays when Postcode Plus is first run - or is available from the View menu (or by pressing [Ctrl]+X). To try out any example in the list, simply double-click it.
The examples help illustrate the types of lookups available in Postcode Plus - including most of the examples quoted in this section of the manual
The Edit menu offers a 'Skip to Next Sector' option. This suppresses the display of more than one record within each sector and can dramatically reduce the number of records to be examined in some types of Lookup or Search.
A 'Postcode Sector' is defined by the number just after the space in a postcode - thus 'B11 1' is one sector 'B11 2' the next.
You can drag text from other Windows programs - like Microsoft Word - and drop it onto the Find Box. Postcode Plus will automatically Lookup the text you dropped - which can be in any of the formats supported by the Find Box.
