Searching Yahoo Archives

Although the Yahoo search function is not very functional or helpful, 
it isn't completely useless. Here are a few things to keep in mind.

1. The search function is a keyword search. This means that you shouldn't 
type in a question, but only relevant keywords that are likely to turn up 
in the kind of post you want to find.

2. The search function does *not* search for strings. If you type in 
"Magic Dishwasher", it will search for that, quotation marks included. 
Better leave off the word "magic" altogether and just search for "dishwasher" 
- it's not likely to come up in every other post. 

3. Remember to click on "Next". The search function will first search 
through 200 or so most recent posts. (This is what makes it a very clumsy 
tool.) Clicking on "Next" will search through the previous 200 posts, and so 
on. Theoretically, "Previous" is supposed to work like the reverse of "Next," 
but there are problems with it sometimes, so I suggest using the Back button 
in your browser to return to the previous page.

4. Header info is also scanned in the search, so you *can* search for a 
poster's Yahoo! ID or email address.

5. Here's the most useful part. It's long. Let's say we're searching for a 
particular post about butterbeer (to pick a rather rare topic). We know that 
it was made sometime before post #50000, so we're not interested in searching 
posts 96000 through 50000. There's a way to avoid having to do this.

A) Type your keyword ("butterbeer") into the search bar and click Search 
Archive.

B) Click Next

C) In your browser's Address bar you will see a URL that looks like this:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/messagesearch/XXXXX?query=butterbeer

This means that the search function looked for the word "butterbeer" in 
posts starting with XXXXX and going back to about 200 posts before XXXXX.

D) Replace XXXXX with 50000, or any other message number that you're *sure* 
was posted later than the post you're looking for.

E) Hit Next as before until you find what you need.