What am I doing wrong? [Search parameter frustration]

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Sentosa

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I've tried to use the Search tool, both the Standard and the Advanced versions. For far, I have nil results -- I don't believe it. For 30+ years I was a university librarian, and hope I might have some experience in successful searching. :Shrug:

For example, I tried searching for: outline, outlines, and outlining.

These can return hundreds of threads. Now there is now way that I'm going to read through every post in 500 threads in the hope of finding something. :flag:

When I first tried other searches, I meticulously read through the posts on the first 5 pages. Nothing, so I gave up.

Either I'm doing something wrong; the indexes aren't working; or there's a reason I haven't thought about. :cry:

Any ideas?
 
regdog

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It's hard to know exactly what the problem is. Perhaps of you told us what you are searching for, we can help narrow down the options. Are you looking for a particular, subject, post, thread, etc?

One general suggestion would be to clear your browser cache and reload the page.


I'm going to port this over to FAQ's where it may get a wider response
 
Sentosa

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Thanks for moving the post.

I always forget to clear the cache.

I was trying to find posts on anything to do about "outlining"
 
Terie

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In the 'Show results as' box, select the 'Posts' radio button to get the search results to display individual posts instead of just the threads.
 
Maryn

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Sentosa, as someone who's experienced with searches in other media, you probably want to use AbsoluteWrite's advanced search option.

In it, you can type in key words (outline outlining, for example) and instruct the search to find those words anywhere in a post or only in the subject line (which is what I'd recommend for this). You can tell the Advanced Search what boards to search, omitting large swaths of AW (all the boards under General Writing Interest seem like a good area) and have your results limited and sorted in various ways, as well as opting for how the results are displayed.

Or, failing a search that works, you can just scan thread titles. Here at AW, we're surprisingly good about assigning meaningful titles to our threads, sometimes with the assistance of moderators. You don't see a thread title here like Question or Help!!!

Maryn, who hopes this is of use
 
Sydneyd

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I use google, especially when I am searching for someone in the Bewares....forum. AW usually comes of second or third, after the subject's own website.
 

Deleted member 42

Search for Outline in the Thread title.

Part of the problem is that there are so very many hits that the vBulletin search is overwhelmed.
 
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