Hi Dave or anyone who knows the answer,

Over in the It can be fun to breed your own zinnias message string in the Annuals forum, we are trying to find a way to search an entire message string, but not the whole forum. That It can be fun... message string is currently up to 87 pages, so it makes sense that someone might want some automation to help find a specific word or phrase in that string, but just that string (or whatever string you are interested in).

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Obviously, we can wait until after the holiday before getting stuck on this tarbaby. I want to watch that Macy's parade.

ZM

I would go to settings and select the highest number of items per page (500 I think).
Then use the control + F function to search for the terms. There are only four pages in that thread and searching one page at a time could be done in a very short amount of time.

Yes, an explanation of same:

Probably every browser has a "find" (search) function built into the browser. with Firefox, the search box comes up at the bottom of the screen, with MS Edge, at the top. This works on all websites, and is not website specific and Dave has nothing to do with it. Activate it with pressing control+F.

- It looks for exact matches in lettering, if one letter or space is off, it won't find what you want.
- It only looks in the page that shows on the screen, however long it is. If your thread has 87 pages, you need to do it 87 times. BUT, if you go to your profile settings, you can change the number of items per page. Mine is set to 240, so the thread mentioned is 8 pages. Your present setting must be at 20. You can go up to 500.
- The search function looks at text, not images, so if there is printing in a posted photo, it will not find it.
- Be aware that the longer the page, the longer it will take to download, especially if there are photos.

Hi Rick,

" If your thread has 87 pages, you need to do it 87 times. "

The thread does have 87 pages and doing a search 87 times is not a solution. What several people in that thread, including me, are looking for is an automated way of doing the search of the entire thread.

I say again, Doing 87 individual searches is a non-solution. If the search target is not present in the thread, we need to know that in a matter of seconds, not hours. Not even minutes. I might have a list of a dozen things I need to know about, so I need to know about each of them in less than a minute.

For example, I was the thread starter and I actually wanted to find the word "Physan" in that thread. It very well could occur only once somewhere in the thread, maybe nowhere, maybe several times, and I don't have time to individually search and look at each of the 87 pages. I could spend upwards of an hour just to discover that the word Physan hasn't occurred in the thread despite my suspicion that it might. And that is just one of several things I am wondering about in that thread.

I kind of think we do need to involve Dave in this problem.

And Happy Thanksgiving !!!

ZM

ZenMan,
I am using a lap top, I have my items per page set to 500 (makes the thread 4 pages). I just did a quick search using the term "Physan" it took less than a minute to search the thread.
page 1: 24 times
page 2: 4 times
page 3: 59 times
page 4: 4 times

Hi Larry,

" I have my items per page set to 500 (makes the thread 4 pages). "

That is very interesting, and the number of Physan "hits" you got was much higher than I would have expected. I am using the Firefox browser on a desktop Windows 10 computer.

As Rick said above, "Be aware that the longer the page, the longer it will take to download, especially if there are photos." That string contains quite a few photos. That is why I would hesitate to change its Items per Page to 500. Apparently, I have it set at 20.

Your LapTop performed very well. You apparently loaded a lot of photo thumbnails into it in order to get all those "hits". Thanks for the info. You have definitely given me something to think about.

But even if I could retroactively change my Items per Page to 500, I would hesitate to do so. I have to also consider how much of an inconvenience it might be for me to load in all those photo thumbnails, even though the Items per Page apparently can vary from user to user.

ZM

ZenMan,
Try it, here on garden.org go to your profile then to settings then under preferences select 500 items per page, you can always change it back to what ever you want.
My daylily plant list is over 500 items (2 pages) and it just takes 45 seconds to load all that info plus the photos.

ZM, it's pretty clear you have gotten yourself all riled up. Hope you are (otherwise) having a good Thanksgiving. Get a good night's sleep and take some advice from Paul Simon with his "50 Ways to leave your Lover":
-- I believe that in the morning you'll begin to see the light --

If you need help, we're here for ya!

We have options for: Search garden.org and Search this Forum but currently there is no option for Search this thread. Maybe @Dave can confirm whether that is a future possibility or not.

ZM is not riled up but just asking a question asked by someone else on another thread. He was only looking for another suggestion besides those suggested here.
Increasing messages per page is good if you remember which thread the information is posted in but if you don't know that, then how do you find it? You can get a list of threads where you posted but then you have to break down each one.

Searching a thread is certainly technically feasible, and it has come up from time to time over the years, but it's just not something that I have created yet. The Ctrl-F is a weak solution but it does work in a pinch on machines that can handle 500 post pages. I'll try to make a better solution one day.

I was doing some looking through, and it seems I actually did implement something a long time ago that should help. If you search a specific forum, then in the search results it has a column for the post number, to the left of the thread link itself. If you click on the post number it will take you directly to the post that contains what you searched for.

Can someone show me an example of what Dave is telling us, using the information ZenMan provided in the original post? I don't seem to understand the process and what is actually being searched for when searching?

Thanks, Dave. That is a search method I haven't tried yet.
So there seems to be a couple of ways to use this. One way is go to the Forums main page.
Under 'Community', click on 'Forums'

That takes you to the 'Gardening Discussion Forums' which is a list of all the forums. In the upper right corner, there is a search box with the text 'Search Forums' inside it.

Enter your search term. I will use 'Peroxide'


Enter and that will give individual posts as a result with that term.



From here, you can click on the individual Post # to open it up, or you can further narrow your search by choosing a forum from the "Search only in" dropdown menu that comes up under the search term.


Again, by clicking on the post #, you will get the specific post. If you click on the thread name, you will get the start page of the thread, and if you click on the forum name, you will get the main page of the forum.

Also, please note that the post # will take you only to the first mention of the search term in the thread. You will still have to use Ctrl + f to find subsequent mentions in the same thread.

To start from a box labeled "Search Garden.org",


Enter the term


You will get different results including Articles, Items in our Member's Ideas, Results from our Gardening Blogs, and also Results from our Forums which is what we are interested in here. You will need to scroll down to the forums.


From here, you can choose from the subjects listed. I choose "Watering with Hydrogen Peroxide". That brings me to the first page of that thread and a search box that still has 'Search Garden.Org' as the search option. If I use this searchbox, it will just bring me back to where I started. Instead, go to the main page of the forum where all the threads are listed. Click on "Ask a Question Forum" where it says 'Ask a Question forum/Watering with hydrogen peroxide' under the banner.



This will give you search boxes labeled 'Search Forums' and 'Search this Forum'


Enter your search term depending on what results you want. That will bring you to a list of individual posts. Click on the post# you want to see.

Good to know Zuzu. That I didn't pick up yet.

I find using Ctrl-F the slowest way to do searches. Just about all browsers let you just start typing and it automatically opens up search with the text with a setting. In Firefox it's called "Search for text when you start typing" on the General tab. It does not bring up search when you're entering info in boxes, so it doesn't conflict with anything. And after that to find the next instance of the text, just hit F3. You can even change pages and F3 will continue to search the text you typed on the previous page. It's so much quicker than Ctrl-F.

Thanks Loretta got the great pictorial detail!

Murky,
Thanks for the F3 tip, it seems to pretty much just take the place of hitting
Control + F on my computer, but that is easier.