Did you find out vs have you found out? (2025)

Hello there!

Context: I told my friend to find out some information about something. Now, I want to ask whether he's accumulated the information or not.

How should I say this? So far I've come up with the following two sentences:

1. Did you find out the information?
2. Have you found out the information?

To me, the second one sounds better than the first one, but then you, not me, are the expert here. Which one do you think is better?

Either will work, and both sound fine. It depends on what you're trying to say.

"Did you find out?" implies that if he didn't, there will be no further opportunity for finding out.

"Have you found out?" implies that if he hasn't, he still might be able to do so.

Florentia52 said:

Either will work, and both sound fine. It depends on what you're trying to say.

"Did you find out?" implies that if he didn't, there will be no further opportunity for finding out.

"Have you found out?" implies that if he hasn't, he still might be able to do so.

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Exactly, might be able... but might be NOT. To me it sounds strange to make an assumption that my interlocutor might keep doing something just because I used the Present Perfect in my question.

Ivan_I said:

Exactly, might be able... but might be NOT. To me it sounds strange to make an assumption that my interlocutor might keep doing something just because I used the Present Perfect in my question.

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Yes, that might seem strange, but that's not what we normally do. We choose the tense based on the situation; we don't generally expect the interlocutor to keep doing something based on our choice of tense.

Florentia52 said:

Yes, that might seem strange, but that's not what we normally do.

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What do you mean by that in but that's not what we normally do, Florentia52?

I see. But in post 2 you say

"Did you find out?" implies that if he didn't, there will be no further opportunity for finding out.
"Have you found out?" implies that if he hasn't, he still might be able to do so.

I don't understand how you can choose one between the two before your interlocutor says to you whether he didn't find out and is not going to go on OR he he/she hasn't found and might go on...

Ah; I didn't realize you were asking about the original question from two years ago.

In that situation, would ask "Did you find out the information?" if it was now too late to find it out, or to put it to any use. If I wanted the information for a paper I needed to finish today, or if the information was to be obtained from someone who is no longer available, I would use the past tense.