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Topic ClosedHOW TO SEARCH THIS FORUM - Read Before Posting!

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sean View Drop Down
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Direct Link To This Post Topic: HOW TO SEARCH THIS FORUM - Read Before Posting!
    Posted: 27 July 2007 at 9:54am
This forum has grown tremendously since it's early days.  We're getting new members every day, and we have over 128,000 postings!  But with that we're getting lots of repeat questions on issues which have been discussed and/or answered at length in the past.

***  PLEASE everyone, perform a search first, before diving in w/questions!

Now that's easier to say than do, because the search function is not optimized.  The default search settings:
  • WILL NOT find all postings you are interested in, and ...
  • WILL DEFINITELY find posts which are completely irrelevant
In order to be sure you find everything you're looking for, you need to manually change the default search settings.  This may help:

Always use "ADVANCED SEARCH"

THE DEFAULTS

When you choose "Advanced Search", you get this window:

If you just type in a key word or two & hit return, you won't get all the right answers.  Check and set these options:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The "Search by Keyword" field has 3 options. It makes a big difference if you are searching for more than one word:
  1.   (the default)
  2. (the BEST option)
The "Match All Words" option will find any topic which contains all of the key words, in any order whatsoever!

eg: a search for "fuel tank" will find this phrase "... the tank was full of fuel ..."

The "Match Any Word" option, will find any topic which contains any of the key words! This is will result in lots of irrelevant results.

eg: a search for "fuel tank" will find "... I ran out of fuel ..." in one post, and "... built like a tank ..." in an entirely different post.

The "Match Phrase" option, will find only topics which contains all of the key words, in the exact order you typed them in!

eg: a search for "fuel tank" will only find "... fuel tank ...", with both words appearing next to each other in order.

*** NEW 5-5-08 ***  Have discovered ANOTHER bug in the search function, however there IS a workaround.

To accurately find a SINGLE and UNIQUE WORD you MUST prepend and/or append a "space" character, AND put the WHOLE string in double-quotes, AND use the "Match phrase" option.  eg:

a search for the word  special will also find many irrelevant posts, eg:
  • especially
  • specialty
  • specialize
  • etc.
To find only EXACT matches, you have to add at least one space (before and/or after the word) and enclose it in double-quotes. ie:

search for "special  ", or "  special", or "  special  "

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The "Find Posts" field is critical if you want to find all possible results, regardless of when it was posted:
  1.    (the default)
  2.    (the BEST option)
As you can see, by default, it only looks through the past 6 months of posting. Anything older than that will not be found.

If you don't know when the post was made, then choose the "Any Date" option.

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The "Search Forum" field is context sensitive. ie, the "default" is to search only within the forum you happened to be in when you hit the search button:

eg., if you are on the home page when you hit search, you'll get this, and it will search every forum:


but if you happen to be reading something in the "Tech Q&A" forum when you hit search, it wants to search only w/in Tech Q&A:

so if your intent was to search elsewhere, or anywhere, you have to manually select the correct forum(s).

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The "Search In" field has only 2 options, and they are mutually exclusive.
  1.    (the default)

The "Message Body" option searches only w/in the message itself! It does not search the topic title.

The "Topic Subject" option searches only w/in the topic title! It does not search the actual message.

With only these 2 options, you may not find all relevant postings. To be sure, you should perform 2 searches, using each option.

This field really needs a 3rd. option "Message and Topic", but for now we don't have that.

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The remaining options, "Search by User Name", "Sort Results" and "Display Results", are self-explanatory, and do not affect relevancy or completeness of the search results.

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And finally, there's one more consideration: SPELLING!

We're not all literary geniuses here TongueWink, so try common alternate spellings, misspellings & typos too!

Happy hunting!


Edited by sean - 08 June 2010 at 1:49pm
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rocnroll View Drop Down
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 27 July 2007 at 10:04am
Great job Sean....that ought to be very helpful. ! Clap
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 27 July 2007 at 12:14pm
 X2  Sure helped me out today !!!!!!!!!!!!!!ClapClapClapClap
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08 Aug. 2007 at 5:06am
Good point Sean, and good job explaining it!
 
thanks
 
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 19 Aug. 2007 at 8:40pm
Yeah, Sean--thanks.  I had sort of "discovered" most of what you laid out, but often forgot, or just didn't put it all together.  You de big picture man!
 
Maybe we need a quarterly "test" for continued membership. 
 
 
del
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 20 Aug. 2007 at 12:50am
Originally posted by dclear dclear wrote:

 
Maybe we need a quarterly "test" for continued membership.
 
 
Uh..........Eye  r   Not  2  guD with  testss....Confused
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sean View Drop Down
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05 May 2008 at 4:54pm
BUMP:

new info added today, 5-5-08, regarding SINGLE WORD searches
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 06 Mar. 2013 at 2:46pm
i just stumbled across this. Seems it is time to bring it to the front.
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