Forum Advanced Search
This is quite a useful feature but one with which many people are not at all familiar. The search screen provides functionality to search for individual keywords in posts. This basic search screen is fine if searching for a particular topic but to get to individual posts it is useful to become familiar with the Advanced Search Screen.
Other features of the screen are as follows:
Filter by member name - returns only those posts containing the specified keyword written by an individual user.
Search Where - Allows the user to only search in certain sections of the forum. Multiple sections can be selected by holding down the [Shift] key to select consecutive sections or the [Ctrl] key for non-consecutive ones.
Search in child forums if sub-category is chosen - if this check-box is ticked then a search on the 'Regions' category will include Berlin, Munich and all other sub-categories including any others below each of them
Search Posts from - A date range to search to or from can be chosen by selecting one of the options ranging from today up to 365 days ago or just left at the default value of 'Any date'.
Sort Results by - Allows for sorting by 'Last Posting Date', 'Number of Replies', 'Poster Name' or 'Forum Name'
Search where - This value defaults to 'Search titles only'. If the keyword(s) being searched for appear in the body of a thread then this option should be changed to 'Search entire post'.
Result type - This value defaults to 'Show results as topics'. To avoid having to then search through the actual thread it is best to change this to 'Show results as posts'.
Once the selection criteria have been entered, click on the 'Perform the search' button and the results will be returned with any exact keyword matches highlighted.