HEChicken,
I had been having all sorts of difficulties, too, but a couple of the posts just before this reply ( see posts by Nifty Chicken and Ivan 3) did narrow in specifically on the problem: I had this trouble too and finally figured it out by experimentation a couple of weeks ago: Using ADVANCED SEARCH, look at I believe it is the third option down, where you can choose between "entire site" and "posts only". This is a HUGELY important choice. If you leave it to the default of "entire site" you get your thousands of results with no way to figure out what post in the thread of perhaps 20,000 posts, your info might lie. Instead, using "posts only" you will get a page of results showing the beginning of each specific post that has the info or at least the search terms you put in. (Don't be mislead by the few lines it shows, because often that is a quote that the poster included in his reply.) Simply click on "view full post" and see if you get the info you wanted. If not, go back one page on your browser to view the search results again, and click on the next result, where it says "view full post". Continue on that way. Of course if you find relevant info, you can follow other posts in that thread forward or backwards, etc. sometimes I've found it difficult to back up to the search results and have to renenter my terms and settings. That might be my own computer's fault, though, not sure.
As Nifty or maybe it was Ivan3 said, another important choice in the advanced search is that you can search for "titles only". Presumably that would yield whole threads, much of which's info should be related to the words in the title. But not always. I think it is good to search both ways. The way I mentioned in paragraph 1, and then also try using "titles only" but for this you probably need to leave option 3 at the default of "entire site" for it to be efficient. When you get time, try these out please, and if I've not explained well, please PM me..I still am not figuring out how to see what threads have new replies in my subscriptions, so I might not notice if you ask me for more explanation here in an actual thread reply.
Good luck! I also plan when time allows to try Ivan3's links for how to use that specific programming tool that BYC's search function is based on.
Asterisk * is wild card: Say I do an advanced search (titles/posts only) for `feather', this will return 42244. If I add the * onto feather in the search: 'feather*' I'll have 43297 returned (any variation of feather, e.g., feathered, feathering, etc.) comes in handy. ed:clarity/format
Asterisk * is wild card: Say I do an advanced search (titles/posts only) for `feather', this will return 42244. If I add the * onto feather in the search: 'feather*' I'll have 43297 returned (any variation of feather, e.g., feathered, feathering, etc.) comes in handy. ed:clarity/format
