Search Strategies:

There are multiple ways to search the collection.

• The simplest is the search box. This is a free text search of the documents themselves. Because many of the documents are old or handwritten, not all are readily searched by text, so there are two other options.
• To browse the documents, simply choose the Topic from the William F. Friedman Collection menu. Topic browse will result in a list of folders (mirroring the folders that the original documents are in at the National Archives) that can be expanded to see links to individual documents.
• To view a complete list of every document in the collection, download the Document Index spreadsheet. Please note that viewing the spreadsheet requires an XLS reader. Using this file, you can find documents by date, title, box, folder, etc. Once a specific document has been found in the Document Index, the DOCREFID (short for Document Reference ID) or document filename can be entered in the Friedman Documents Search box on the web site, which will locate the document for you on NSA.gov.