Search - How do I search for a phrase?

[rosecottage]

In search engines like Google, if I am searching a phrase, I can get results that include that exact phrase by putting the phrase in quotes. For instance, "lost library books." When I try to search the message boards the same way, it seems to treat the words in quotes as two or more separate, unrelated words, used apart from one another in the results. Is there something I need to know to use the search feature more effectively?

[cbollin]

While waiting for the powers that be to chime in with real help, because I'm sure there is an easy, but not obvious to you or me answer, I thought I'd share what I do.

Within the message board search engine itself, I still don't know how to do an exact string. The help menu on the board search makes these suggestions for limiting search terms, but to get the exact string... I don't have a clue. I tend to try to remember one or two keywords and if I remember who the author was, that helps to limit it. But let's get real --- who remembers all of that????


Search for Keywords:
You can use AND to define words which must be in the results, OR to define words which may be in the result and NOT to define words which should not be in the result. Use * as a wildcard for partial matches


so, that means if I put in the board search engine the following:
lost AND library AND books

it will return 11 matches where all three words appear in the message, but not necessarily as an exact string (but your post with that exact string is the first returned result)


I guess the other part to mention on that is to make sure you are using the option to search for ALL terms, not ANY terms.


looking forward to hearing from the technical crew on this one. There has to be a "light bulb moment" answer out there somewhere.

-crystal

[Julie in MN]

I agree with Crystal's helpful hints. The only other hints I can think of offhand are:

1. Try to use the most unusual words you can think of. For instance, bookbasket or even basket will give you more specific results than book.

2. If you know whether you want to look in the archives vs. the open forums (new posts on the General Board & posts on the Ideas boards), then check off the category option as well, to narrow your search.

3. If you know at least one person who answered a thread topic, then add her to your search in the Author box.

4. One other feature of the search page is the "sort by" feature. This can narrow down your search by alphabetizing them (sort by post subject), putting them in chronological order (sort by post time), separating them by which forum they are on, etc.

5. When searching the Archives, sometimes it is easier to just open up an archive and look thru the list of topics. Once you have chosen a specific archive to look through, you can also use the "find on this page" (control-F or F3) feature on your own computer. For instance, on the Language Arts page, you can easily find all the topics that begin with the word "Spelling." But there are a couple more specific topics in there about spelling such as "Dictation - Help when spelling is too hard" which would also be found with a "find on this page" hunt. Note: This would only help find words on the one page you are viewing, such as finding "spelling" among the list of "language arts" topics; it will not search inside those pages. But since there are up to 100 topics on the page, it might help you scan the topic page more quickly.

See how I locate my links so quickly :o)
Julie

[Lucy]

Hi Everyone,

After reading the post yesterday I knew I had nothing else to add. I have sent an e-mail to Scott at MFW and will follow up with a phone call. So hopefully he will chime in soon:)

Lucy

[cbollin]

Thanks for the informative responses above. The "search page" feature is a wonderful tool to know about! But I am still hoping someone who knows will tell me if the kind of search I originally asked about is possible. I guess it isn't, but surely someone must know...

not official here .....

When you asked the original question, I asked my husband, who is a computer software architect, if he had any ideas. My dh spends a lot of time on lots of forums that run different versions of phpBB (that's the software that this board runs on). He played around a bit with it. His conclusion is that it can't be done with this older version of software that runs this board.

the only other thing that my dh and I tried was to use google site search.
from google search box you'd type in

site:board.mfwbooks.com "lost library books"

so, it's possible that google might be the better route instead of the message board search engine.

-crystal

[rosecottage]

Crystal,

Thanks for your last post. That was very helpful.

Leeny