I'm sure this has been asked and answered, but this question came up on the Pets thread in the Sandbox: "I entered a search in the Database for information on the Blue Tailed Skink. Up came this Sandbox forum. Is there any way I can find info within a Forum category (Pets 2016), without reading through 148 pages?"

I don't believe there is any way to do that -- or is there?

Yes. You can use the Control F control + f and type the word "skink" into the search box that pops up. I have my preference set to 400 posts and I see 8 pages of posts, so do the Control F thing 8 times and you will find your skink. I wouldn't use 'Blue Tailed" in the search as some type it as one word, some as 2 words and some as a hyphenated word and that will mess up the search.

Edited to correct to read control + f
Thanks!

The first mention of skink on that thread is here:
http://garden.org/thread/view_...

The control f works good in a thread. If you want to search in a forum, go to the forum home page and look on the right hand side, there is a search box that says "Search this Forum".

Horntoad said:The control f work good in a thread. If you want to search in a forum, go to the forum home page and look on the right hand side, there is a search box that says "Search this Forum".

Yes. Control+f will search trough all the words on that particular page only, whatever that page is. So if you use it on a particular forum home page, it will search through the titles of the threads, not the threads themselves. "Search this Forum" will search through everything.

I guess I just needed a refresher course... I'm sure all that info was stored somewhere in my brain!! Thanks for taking the time to help

When you get to the "search all forums" result page,. you can page down to the end.
See: "See more results in the forums"

That takes you to a screen where you can specify particular forums.
That might be easier if you want to search multiple forums.

What am I missing? I hit Control F & nada, no search box pops up, nothing. It's just F correct? Not F1 or F2 or any of the other F's correct?
I'm on a Mac, does that make a difference?

flaflwrgrl said:What am I missing? I hit Control F & nada, no search box pops up, nothing. It's just F correct? Not F1 or F2 or any of the other F's correct?
I'm on a Mac, does that make a difference?

Well I just googled it and it says it works on Mac. On my PC it show as a small search box just under the bookmark bar.

Using Microsoft Edge it's in the upper left corner



Using Chrome it's in the upper right.

It would be nice if the search function (the "Search this Forum" feature on the right-hand side) on the site did provide direct links to pages within a thread, rather than just a link to the thread. I do use the browser's inbuilt text search (CTRL+F as previously mentioned), but even with hundreds of posts showing on a single page, it is still inconvenient to navigate through potentially dozens of pages looking for the one or two posts that are relevant. Each page takes time to load (especially if you set it to a high number of posts) and for long threads, this can take 5-10 minutes for me to find what I'm looking for.

flaflwrgrl said:What am I missing? I hit Control F & nada, no search box pops up, nothing. It's just F correct? Not F1 or F2 or any of the other F's correct?
I'm on a Mac, does that make a difference?

You kind of have to "search" for the search box that comes up... on Win7 it's on the right-hand side under my bookmarks bar (near the top of the page); wish I knew how it worked on a Mac, Ann -- it might or might not be pretty much the same. But yes, it IS just the control key plus the letter F. (for "find," I guess)

On my Winows 7 it's on the bottom of the page in the left-hand corner. Are you pushing on the Control and F keys simultaneously? It won't work if you push Control and then push F.

I probably should have said "Windows 7, using Chrome."

It's not control + F simultaneously....
It is control + f (not capitalized) simultaneously.

The search box is rather subtle. With Firefox, mine is at the lower left, too.

Australis said:Each page takes time to load (especially if you set it to a high number of posts) and for long threads, this can take 5-10 minutes for me to find what I'm looking for.

Wow, I only have a 5 megabyte per second connection, and the Lily forum's 2016 thread's first page (500 posts) takes 12 seconds to load. I think your computer needs a house cleaning....

Leftwood said:Wow, I only have a 5 megabyte per second connection, and the Lily forum's 2016 thread's first page (500 posts) takes 12 seconds to load. I think your computer needs a house cleaning....

Is that 5MBps (megabytes per second) or 5Mbps (megabits per second)? There's a factor of 8 difference.

My PC is a few years old, but generally responsive (Intel Core2Quad, 8GB RAM, 250GB SSD, Windows 10 and Firefox). I have my NGA account set to display only 100 posts per page, since I find that easier to manage (too many posts on one page means that if I have to leave the page and come back to it, I can lose track of where I was up to - especially on old threads that I am reading through, as when you view a page, all posts on that page are marked as read).

If we take the Lily 2016 thread as an example, that's 8 pages for me. Depending on what I'm searching for, there might be no results or there might be many results. Each page necessitates clicking on the up/down arrows in the search bar, then going back to the top or bottom of the page to navigate to the next (which involves more work if there is a post that mentions your search term but doesn't answer the question you had).

It'd be great if the search functionality could be improved, since I am sure the current setup leads to people posting questions that have been already asked. I'm used to the idea of searching for something before I ask a question on it, but digging through all the threads on a subject without links to specific posts takes time!

Edited to fix spelling and grammar.

@Weedwhacker - Thanks so much for using my question on the Pets Thread in the Sandbox to bring in all this valuable information!!!! I have a lot to digest and try out.

And thank you @greene for your initial responses. Seems you are always helping to bail me out of a predicament.

Cheers and thanks to you all. What a great community of helpers!

If I'm understanding Joshua correctly I have found the same thing. When I search forums for a keyword the results go to the thread as a whole, then one has to go through the thread page by page looking for the relevant item. Where there are too many pages I usually give up. It can be somewhat speeded up by having the browser "find in page" instead of scrolling, no result then go on to the next page and repeat. Maybe there is a way to be more precise and go straight to the actual page and I haven't clued in yet.

Horntoad said:

Well I just googled it and it says it works on Mac. On my PC it show as a small search box just under the bookmark bar.

Using Microsoft Edge it's in the upper left corner



Using Chrome it's in the upper right.

Thanks Jay. I discovered on a Mac it's Command F rather than Control F. Macs have both Command and Control buttons. Command F opens up a search bar in the upper right corner using Safari.

Leftwood said:It's not control + F simultaneously....
It is control + f (not capitalized) simultaneously.

True, in the sense that you don't need to hold down the "shift" key to capitalize the F... but if you happen to have the caps lock on, it doesn't hurt anything.