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Old 11-21-2003, 07:22 AM   #2
Bill
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Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: The mountains of Scottsdale, AZ, and the beaches of Maine
Posts: 10,088
Default Re:The Search Engine

Kudos to you, Mike, for taking this on! I have found the search engine to be harder to use than it should be. Like you, I have sometimes had trouble finding my own posts - now I know why! And since some of my posts appear to have a different display name, I'm doubly confused.

Also noticed that it doesn't seem to know about wildcards, like the * used in so many Windows apps.

The default 60-day search window seems a less-than-optimal choice, too. Since the recent stuff is easily found in the original thread, I'm usually hoping to find something in a time farther back. When I remember, I open the window up to 600 days - when I forget, I can't find what I'm looking for.

Also, I would like some info on how to form Boolean search expressions. For example, is there a "NOT" capability?

Occasionally, I seem to have had some trouble when I leave the Search Topic window blank - in other words, looking for all posts by Elvis, for example. When that happens, I put something dumb in the topic box (like a single letter "a&quot, and it seems to work.

I'm sure I'm doing some things wrong - but the search engine isn't intuitive. Simple instructions sure would help.

Bill
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