Familiarize yourself with the basic controls of an ohmmeter, which often has resistor range controls, and different ohmmeters have different ranges. Common ranges include the 1, 10, 100, 1000, 100,000 and 1,000,000 ohm range. However, an auto-ranging ohmmeter may not have a resistance range.
Learn the terminals on your ohmmeter. Most ohmmeters have a positive and negative terminal, which the positive and negative measurement leads must be plugged into. If your ohmmeter has other features, such as current and voltage measurement functions, it may have several different lead terminals. For a resistance measurement, your measurement leads must be inserted into the terminals designated for resistance measurement. Sometimes ohm is written next to that terminal, however, the manufacturer may also specify the terminals to use in an illustrated graphic in the operator's manual.
Consider the resistance of the measurement leads. If the value of the resistance you plan to measure is small, the resistance of the leads may effect the accuracy of the reading.
Measure the resistance of the leads. An ohmmeter's range is selected based on an estimate of the resistor's value. First, if your ohmmeter is not an auto-ranging ohmmeter, set it to a low range, such as the 10 ohm or 1 ohm range. The resistance of measurement leads is often very low: 10 ohms or less. Note the reading on the digital ohmmeter. Change the range to a lower range if the ohmmeter reads zero. Continue lowering the range until a reading other than zero is obtained. Stop when you reach the lowest range. The resistance is very close to zero if the ohmmeter still reads zero on the lowest scale; otherwise the display may be the actual lead resistance value, or it may be a multiple of the resistance value as noted in step two.
Change the range to a higher range if the ohmmeter displays an out of range error. Remember that an out of range error often indicates that your resistor range setting to low. Continue doing so until the ohmmeter display produces a numerical reading. Note the value and either use that value as the resistance value or multiply the displayed number by the ohmmeter range setting. Remember which procedure you use depends on the way your ohmmeter operates.