Investors are now able to search the contents of the disclosure documents filed electronically with the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission using a new full-text search tool on the SEC’s web site.

The newly searchable information includes registration statements, annual and quarterly reports, and other filings by companies and mutual funds filed during the past four years on the commission’s EDGAR database.

“When investors and analysts are looking for information about a company or fund, they’ll no longer be required to laboriously wade through each individual filing separately to get what they want. Instead, they can now access millions of pages in dozens or even hundreds of company filings all at once,” said SEC Chairman Christopher Cox, in a news release. “The availability of this powerful new search capability is a milestone in our interactive data initiative. By harnessing technology to transform corporate disclosure, this new search capability will liberate investors, researchers, and analysts from the more time-consuming and less reliable chore of accessing information in public filings one by one.”

Each year 15 to 18 million pages of filings are submitted to the SEC by more than 15,000 public companies and other filers via the EDGAR system, it reported. The EDGAR full-text search allows users to enter a keyword or conceptual search query and retrieve a list of related filings. Searchers may also make use of Boolean operators and wildcard capabilities.