A device and a method for finding information elements (1) in one or more objects (7), the information elements (1) being storable in a storage device and the objects (7) being displayable on a display device via a graphical user interface (18). The present invention has the feature that the information elements (1) are arranged in a coordinate system of a graphically displayed object (7) so that each information element (1) has associated therewith at least one coordinate point in the graphically displayed object (7), that, for finding the desired information element (10) using the graphical user interface (18), at least one selection window (6) is present which is variable in size and shape and which allows selection of an arbitrarily-sized subset of coordinate points and associated information elements (1) of the object (7), and that the selected information elements (9, 10) are displayable on the graphical user interface (18) of the display device.