# How to exclude observations with certain annotations? **URL:** \ **Category:** General\ **Tags:** search, search-urls\ **Created:** [February 1, 2024, 4:20pm UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/how-to-exclude-observations-with-certain-annotations/48672 "2024-02-01T16:20:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![quillipede](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.inaturalist.org/quillipede/32/56813_2.png) [@quillipede](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/quillipede)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2024, 4:20pm UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/how-to-exclude-observations-with-certain-annotations/48672/1 "2024-02-01T16:20:39Z")
I’m trying to exclude animals that are annotated as Dead from my search. I find searching for animals marked as Alive is not very useful in this, because most people don’t annotate living animals at all; but dead animals are very often explicitly marked as Dead. I saw [here](https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/search+urls#annotations) that you should theoretically be able to exclude searches by using the `without_term_id` and `without_term_value_id` URL additions, but they don’t seem to do anything. I’ve tried `&without_term_id=17&without_term_value_id=19` because it sounded at first like you need to specify both the term and the value in the URL, but observations marked as Dead still appear in the search. I looked around some more and found people saying that the system actually takes `without_term_id` to mean that the term isn’t annotated at all, making the two contradictory, so then I tried just using `&without_term_value_id=19` by itself, but Dead animals still appeared in the search. So how can I go about searching for all observations of a given taxa that are not explicitly marked as Dead? ---
**Author:** ![swampster](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.inaturalist.org/swampster/32/37519_2.png) [@swampster](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/swampster)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2024, 4:39pm UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/how-to-exclude-observations-with-certain-annotations/48672/2 "2024-02-01T16:39:22Z")
See this bug report: [Identify Filter “Without Annotation” not working properly](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/identify-filter-without-annotation-not-working-properly/30148). ---
**Author:** ![natev](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.inaturalist.org/natev/32/29855_2.png) [@natev](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/natev)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2024, 5:00pm UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/how-to-exclude-observations-with-certain-annotations/48672/3 "2024-02-01T17:00:01Z")
If you are using the identify page, there is a clickable filter: ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/uploads/inaturalist/original/3X/1/9/196aaed58c14105ca4ed6fc1c0da53899ae6c4c4.png) I tried reading the bug report post referenced above and I really couldn’t figure out what was going on there. This setting has always worked for me. ---
**Author:** ![quillipede](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.inaturalist.org/quillipede/32/56813_2.png) [@quillipede](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/quillipede)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2024, 5:10pm UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/how-to-exclude-observations-with-certain-annotations/48672/4 "2024-02-01T17:10:20Z")
Ah, I wasn’t using the Identify page; I forget it has different functionality than the Explore page. Is it possible to use Identify to search a custom area (i.e. a box or a circle on a map)? I can’t seem to figure out how to do that. I tried pasting the URL data generated by an area-bound search in Explore into the URL for the Identify search, but many of the results I got seemed to be well outside the area I’m looking at (which is not a Place and doesn’t correspond to any interestingly distinct area that I’m aware of, it’s just a guesstimate of what’s in walking range for me of a particular starting point). ---
**Author:** ![tiwane](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.inaturalist.org/tiwane/32/54612_2.png) [@tiwane](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/tiwane)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2024, 5:18pm UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/how-to-exclude-observations-with-certain-annotations/48672/5 "2024-02-01T17:18:09Z")
> [@quillipede](#): > > Is it possible to use Identify to search a custom area (i.e. a box or a circle on a map)? I tried pasting the URL data generated by an area-bound search in Explore into the URL for the Identify search You don’t have to do that, you can make a search in Explore, then click on Filters and then click on Identify in the Filters pop-up. That should work. ---
**Author:** ![quillipede](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.inaturalist.org/quillipede/32/56813_2.png) [@quillipede](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/quillipede)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2024, 5:22pm UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/how-to-exclude-observations-with-certain-annotations/48672/6 "2024-02-01T17:22:54Z")
Oh, neat! I didn’t know that was an option, that’s good to know. That seems to work perfectly. Is it possible to go from the refined Identify search to a map view to get an overview of where the results are? ---
**Author:** ![jdjohnson](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.inaturalist.org/jdjohnson/32/1456_2.png) [@jdjohnson](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/jdjohnson)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2024, 5:34pm UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/how-to-exclude-observations-with-certain-annotations/48672/7 "2024-02-01T17:34:16Z")
I know people have pointed out a different way to filter in the identify modal but I just want to address the original URL formatting in case someone else is looking for an answer to a similar question. The reason it doesn’t work is that `without_term_id=17` means there is no annotation about live or dead status. The `term_value_id` or `without_term_value_id` only works if it’s also given the `term_id`. Imagine that `term_id` is the name of a book and `term_value_id` is a page number, the page number doesn’t mean anything without the name of the book. To get everything marked as “alive” or “cannot be determined” the URL should be `&term_id=17&without_term_value_id=19` I have updated the wiki entry to make it more clear and used the above example. ---
**Author:** ![pisum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/91b2a8/32.png) [@pisum](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/pisum)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2024, 9:11pm UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/how-to-exclude-observations-with-certain-annotations/48672/8 "2024-02-01T21:11:32Z")
> [@quillipede](#): > > Is it possible to go from the refined Identify search to a map view to get an overview of where the results are? when you have the Identify page open in your browser, change the URL by deleting `/identfy` in the URL string, and go that that new URL > [@swampster](#): > > See this bug report: [Identify Filter “Without Annotation” not working properly](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/identify-filter-without-annotation-not-working-properly/30148). that’s a good thread that covers the situation described here, but in my opinion, this situation isn’t really a bug. moderators / staff should consider closing that thread. ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/uploads/inaturalist/original/2X/7/7831452cf7f0d653ff1ffd34176334b7ef1b6a17.png) [@system](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/system)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2024, 9:12pm UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/how-to-exclude-observations-with-certain-annotations/48672/9 "2024-04-01T21:12:06Z")
Closed on April 1, 2024, 9:12pm UTC This topic was automatically closed 60 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.