Universal search
A search bar runs across the top of every signed-in page. It accepts whatever you can name — a UARN, a billing reference, a postcode, an address phrase, or a ratepayer name — and routes you to the right place. The bar is a convenience; the heavy lifting lives in Search.
The search bar
Type what you have. As you type, a dropdown opens directly below the input. The dropdown has a locked vertical order. At the top, your lens — see Search lens — sits in a tinted band, pre-seeded with the lens you last used; change it before you submit if you want a different curation for this question. Below the lens, the dropdown shows your saved items that match — bookmarks, portfolios, prospecting runs, and lenses — each row labelled with a coloured chip so you can tell what each is at a glance. Below that, the dropdown shows top matches from the database, labelled by what you typed: Identifier lookup for UARNs and billing references; Postcode for postcodes; Address phrase for free-text that looks like an address; Top matches — ratepayer for ratepayer names. The label tells you what the bar understood.
You have three routes out. Click a saved-item row to open that item's detail page direct. Click a single database match — a known UARN, an exact ratepayer — to open that thing direct, with no Search results page in between. Click Run full search for "what you typed" at the foot, or press Enter, to open Search results with the term as a free-text query and your lens applied.
The bar is not a query language. For a question that needs filtering, sorting, or composition — Tesco hereditaments in Harlow above a rateable value — submit the term and use the result frame's filters. Most ten-second look-ups end at the dropdown; everything richer happens inside Search.
Keyboard shortcuts
⌘K on a Mac, or Ctrl-K on Windows, focuses the bar from anywhere you are in the Explorer; / is an alternative shortcut. Use arrow keys to walk the matches in the dropdown — the arrows skip the lens picker, so your typing-to-Enter flow stays fast. Enter on a focused row activates that row, the same as clicking it. Enter with no row focused submits the foot row and opens Search results. Escape closes the dropdown but leaves your typed term in the input.
When the dropdown opens with exactly one match — a UARN you pasted, a saved item that matches what you typed precisely — that row carries focus from the start, with a tinted band and a small ↵ chip. Paste a UARN, press Enter, and you land on the hereditament directly.