AP Exchange Community Blog

Searching by City or Dateline

Here are some tips to help you get at state & city content in AP Exchange.

For photos, try this: State=NY as well as City=Houston.  To get at text, you can run these searches: Dateline=houston as well as Slug=NY.

You can also combine these. Try tryping:  Dateline=houston OR city=houston

State Pics and Text

Setting up a single search for state news and pics is one of the most basic searches in AP Exchange. A simple way of doing this is to do the following:

1. Go to Advanced Search

2. Click on More Options at the top of the Advanced Search page.

3. In the giant text box type:  state=xx OR slug=xx

3a. Make xx= your two letter state abbreviation

4. Scroll to the bottom of the page and Save your search by giving it a name.

5. The results of this search will show up on the Saved Search section in the left column of the home page.

Looking for Feature Pics

Are you a subscriber to AP's Weekly Features service? Need to track down weekly features photos quickly?

It's simple. Type spf into the AP Exchange main search window and run the search. You can also be more precise. Try typing SPF and another relevant keyword. For example, to find pics for a Weekly Features story on Tuna, type 'spf AND tuna'.

Finding Advancers in Exchange

A quick, handy way to track down advance or HFR copy is to run the following search.

editorialtype=advance or editoriatype=holdforrelease. Remember, all one word. These will round up all advancers and HFR items quickly and easily.  Give it a try!

Searching by Dateline

Need to find news from a particular town quick?

The fastest way in AP Exchange is to run a quick search for dateline=_________. Plug in the name of a town and you're done! Here's a couple examples: dateline=milwaukee or dateline="san jose".

Also, same process for slug=, byline=, headline=. Try it!

Finding the Weather in Exchange

How can you find weather maps in AP Exchange? One quick way to to do a simple search using the following approach.

First, depress the 'Graphics' button at the top center of Exchange. Then, in the main search box type apamXX where XX=your state abbreviation. For PM maps type appmXX.

For example, an AM map for Indiana would be apamin.

Most states go by the two-letter code, but there are a few exceptions where states are grouped. Here the codes:

BUS - black and white US weather map
CUS - color US map
GUS - grey scale US map
CANV – California/Nevada
DAK – North and South Dakota
KYTN – Kentucky/Tennessee
MDDE- Maryland/Delaware
MSAL – Mississippi/Alabama
MWR - Midwest regional
NER -North East Regional
NNE – Northern New England
SER – South East Regional
SNE – Southern New England
WR – West Regional

All other states are represented by their two-letter code.