Enhanced content is provided to the user to provide additional context.
Navigate by entering citations or phrases (eg: 1 CFR 1.1 49 CFR 172.101 Organization and Purpose 1/1.1 Regulation Y FAR).
Choosing an item from citations and headings will bring you directly to the content. Choosing an item from full text search results will bring you to those results. Pressing enter in the search box will also bring you to search results.
Background and more details are available in the Search & Navigation guide.
Reader Aids help people use and understand the eCFR. Reader Aids information is not published in the Code of Federal Regulations.
Each title in the CFR is organized hierarchically – for example a title may be divided into chapters, parts, subparts, sections and appendices. Each level of hierarchy provides some context about the content contained in it and is useful in understanding the broader purpose of the content. You can see an example below or a live version here.
A combined Search and Navigation tool appears on most pages of the eCFR and can be used to quickly find the content you need by entering:
1 CFR 1.1, Part 1234, Title 7 Chapter III)Organization and Purpose, Regulation Z)As you type in the field navigation options will appear in a list below. You may continue entering text and results will be refined as you add or adjust the entered text.
Pressing return will skip the list and jump directly to full text search results. Options may be selected by clicking or tapping. Alternately, use the up & down keys change selection (indicated by a green highlight) and enter to select the currently highlighted option.
Selecting one of the items in the Full Text Search Result section (active item is indicated by a green highlight) will perform that search and navigate to a search result page with items matching those terms. These results will include sections of the eCFR that use some or all of the terms entered in their full text (not necessarily together or in any particular order). There are two types of full text search result options:
Navigation options appearing below this header in the list allow you to jump directly to that level of the eCFR. Items suggested here are derived from the headings for the various levels of the CFR (chapters, parts, sections, etc.).
Navigating to a result will take you to the full text of the listed content. For levels that also have an associated table of contents page a blue ToC link and icon will appear which you may click or tap to jump directly to the table of contents instead.
Unlike the full text search result counts, items that appear in the Citations and Headings section which do not exactly match the order of your entered terms will not appear. As an example, if you’re interested in jumping directly to section "1 CFR 2.5 — Publication of statutes, regulations, and related documents." typing any of the following text will suggest that Part: 1 CFR 2.5 ,1 CFR 2., 1/2.5, 2.5, Publication of stat, statutes, regula or related documents
The figure above shows a portion of the table at the highest level. Each title is listed and linked. In addition on the right side there are links to the recent changes in titles that have them. We’ll come back to those recent changes, but for now if we click on a link to a title we see a more detailed view of the table of contents for that title.
This shows the table of contents of Title 2 down to the part level. You can expand and collapse the content by clicking on the gray arrowheads. In the screenshot above, the content for Subtitle A is expanded and the contents of Subtitle B are collapsed. You can continue to explore the table of contents by clicking on Subtitle A to get a detailed views of its contents seeing
Chapter 1 of Subtitle A, Part A of Chapter 1, etc. In this view we have hovered over the title of Part 25. The tooltips indicate that you have two options. You can skip hierarchical navigation by clicking on the name of the part or section link (starting with "Universal Identifier...") and going directly to the content of Part 25 or you can see the table of contents for Part 25 by clicking on the Part 25 link. Navigation directly to the content is possible for non-reserved parts, subparts, sections and appendices.
Using the top navigation bar you can also browse to individual titles, specific agencies, or content incorporated by reference.
Browsing by title allows you to navigate directly to an individual title. Browsing by agency allows you to view a table showing which titles and chapters pertain to the work of each federal agency. Incorporation by reference links provide information about where in the CFR material is incorporated by reference and the publisher’s contact information so that readers can obtain the material.
On each of these pages, you can use find in page (Control-F or Command-F) in your browser to search for the title, agency, reference of interest.
The point-in-time system supports full text search of the eCFR content. By default the search is performed on the current content of the eCFR, you can also use the date field to search eCFR content from as it appeared at a specific point in time.
If you click on the "Search" link in the top navigation bar you’ll be taken to a page where you specify your search terms and optionally limit to a particular title or date.
If you are currently viewing eCFR content at the Part level or higher, you can also begin a search from the left side navigation.
Search terms are automatically stemmed; a search for "fishes" would also find sections that contain the term "fish" and vice-versa.
If you enter more than one search term, your results will include only results that match both terms. A search for "fishing boat" without quotes will return only pages that contain both words, "fishing" and "boat". If you are searching for the exact phrase "fishing boat" enclose it in quotes.
If you wish to exclude sections that match a certain term, use a "-" for negation: fish -boat will return sections that include the word fish but not the word boat. If you wish to search for either one word or another, use a | character, grouped in parentheses: fish (boat | transportation) will find sections that have the word fish and either the word boat or transportation.
Search results default to being displayed as individual results much like a search result page from search engines like Google.
Within these search results you can filter to see the table of contents for a specific title or chapter, or view the text of a part by clicking on the links within the results. An example is shown below.
You can also navigate the search results in their hierarchy.
In any search results, you can click on the magnifying glass icon to filter your results to just that portion of the hierarchy of eCFR.
You can subscribe to eCFR search results to be notified of any changes to the search results by clicking on the "Subscribe" link in any view of search results.