In the beginning (decades ago), search functions had reasonable rules. One of which was placing quote marks around a phrase to restrict the search to the phrase. If there were no results, nothing would be displayed. I was happy with no results where there were none.
Not so these days. There is no way currently to restrict searches to a phrase. Google, and MS,… always uses any of the words entered. This result is billions and billions of worthless results and a waste of time and resources.
The search function for this forum’s software also does not follow this rule. Example: Searching for “Close Project” results in displaying any post that contains both words, not only the phrase.
So, I will follow your admonition to search first, but no doubt I will post some suggestions that have already been.
On this site, it’s a bit “hidden” but if it helps, @FredBob, when you click the magnifying glass on the search bar without any key words, you get to the “Advanced Search” feature of phpBB.
When you do that, you can elect to select a keyword search (any terms), or a phrase search (query as entered) by clicking the appropriate radio button: “Search for all terms or use query as entered” vs “Search for any terms”
There’s also helpful text on the left indicating how to filter the search:
You also have additional search options you can select, such as:
which forums or sub-forums to search against
if you want to search within, e.g. Post subjects and message text, Message text only, Topic titles only, First post of topics only
displaying results as posts or topics
how to sort the results
limiting results by a certain time frame
and how many results to return
Image attached (very zoomed out / kind of blurry):
There is no way to search for and find a specific term using what no longer is recognized: placing quote marks around the phrase used to search for the exact phrase.
I search for “manual saving” and I get 271 “matches.” Most do not have the exact phrase. The second listing does have the phrase, but is looks to be coincidental.
This is why I posted. Google, and many forum applications no longer recognize this fundamental search format. But there is forum software that does honor this very reasonable function.
When i want to search for an exact phrase it is because i need only those results. Not thousands of variations and spellings. This forum searches for all the words in the phrase.
So, the instruction to search for other posts about the same issue/feature/suggestion. is a non-productive time waster.
I am sure the instruction originated when the forum software did perform better.
(((And: light grey on white is childish. “Look what i can do!” another reason to change forum software. )))
