> ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.rescueconsole.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Searching the registry > Looking up a person, an email, a phone number or a microchip in the shared Public Registry, and reading what a match tells you. **Search the Public Registry** looks for flags that any rescue on RescueConsole has raised about a person or an animal, and for rescues that have registered a microchip. It is the check to make before placing an animal with somebody new. Reach it with **Search the registry** on [the Public Registry page](/registry/flags), or **Search the Public Registry** in the menu at the top of a [person's record](/people/record#the-public-registry) or an [animal's record](/animals/record). It needs **See** on Registry. **Your flags** goes back to your rescue's own list. ## What the search covers A search finds: * flags other rescues have raised that are **active** and shared with the **network**; * your own rescue's flags, whatever their status or visibility. It never finds another rescue's flag that is pending review, disputed, revoked or private. See [how a flag is vetted](/registry/flags#how-a-flag-is-vetted). ## What you can search by | Field | How it matches | | ---------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Microchip number | The whole number. Spaces, dashes and other punctuation are ignored. The line under the box says what was read from the number, with a **Look it up** link. | | Email | The whole address, ignoring capital letters. Punctuation inside it counts: "j.smith" and "jsmith" are different addresses. | | Phone | The whole number. Choose its country from **Country…** if you know it: the search then finds flags filed with that country or with none. Without a country, it finds flags by the digits alone. | | Name / alias | Flags whose name contains what you type, ignoring capital letters. | | Subject | **Any**, **person** or **animal**. Narrows the results; it cannot be searched on its own. | Results appear as you type. **One kind of identifier is used at a time.** If you fill in more than one, a microchip number is used first; failing that, the email and phone (a flag matching either is found); failing that, the name. To check a person by name as well as by email, search twice. ### Searching by name A flag about a person is matched by name on the **Also known as** its rescue gave, or, when there is none, on the first and last name together. A prefix or suffix is not part of it. When you open the search from a person's record, **Name / alias** is filled with their name as the record shows it, including any prefix or suffix, and **Subject** is set to **person**. If the name has a prefix or suffix, remove it from the box before you read the results. A name match is only as good as a name. Two people can share one, and one person can be flagged under an alias: check a match against the other details before you act on it. ### Searching by microchip A flag about an animal can only be found by its microchip number. The search does not look at an animal's name, species, breed or color, so an animal flag filed without a chip number will not be found. When you open the search from an animal's record, **Microchip number** is filled with its chip and **Subject** is set to **animal**. ### Your privacy, and theirs What you type is not added to the page's address, so it does not end up in your browser history or in a link you share. Email, phone and microchip numbers are compared in a scrambled form: a search can confirm a value you already have, and never reveals one you do not. See [what is shared](/registry/flags#what-is-shared-and-with-whom). ## What a match shows Matching flags are listed in a table, newest first. | Column | What it shows | | --------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Flag type | Click it to open the flag's page, with its narrative and reviews. | | Subject | **person** or **animal**. | | Who | For a person: the name, the year of birth, and the city and state, when the flag has them. For an animal: its name, species, breed, color and sex. On your own rescue's flag that is not yet active, a badge reads **Yours** with its status, so you can tell your own unvetted flag from one the network has corroborated. | | Severity | **advisory**, **moderate** or **severe**. | | Status | The flag's status. | | Submitted | When the flag was raised. | When nothing matches, the page says **No matches found**. That is the expected result for most lookups. A search that finds nothing looks the same whether the person has no flags or a detail was mistyped, so check what you typed. ### Registered to a rescue A microchip search also looks for rescues that publish their animals' chip numbers. A match is shown above the flags, under **Registered to a rescue**, and is not a flag: it is a rescue saying the animal is, or was, theirs. Each registration shows the animal's name and species, and whether it is **in the care of** that rescue or was **previously with** them. It shows the rescue's found-animal contact, or **No found-animal contact listed. Reach them through their public page.** When the chip's maker is known, a line names it and offers a lookup with the maker or through the AAHA Universal Pet Microchip Lookup, for when the rescue cannot be reached. When there is a registration but no flag, the flags table says **No safety flags**. Your own rescue's chips are published, or not, under [Settings → Operations & forms → Microchip registry](/settings/microchip-registry). ## During an application RescueConsole does not search the registry by itself when an application arrives. The check is part of the review: * On a [form submission](/everyday/submissions) that is linked to a person, the **Follow-up** card lists **Search the Public Registry** among the checks to make before deciding. With **Change** on People, **Add a task** puts it on the applicant's record as a task, and with **See** on Registry, **Open the registry search** opens this page, empty, for you to search. * On the applicant's [person record](/people/record#the-public-registry), **Search the Public Registry** opens this page with their name filled in. If you find a flag, open it and read the narrative and the reviews before you decide anything.