Is there any way to search only the Forum?

[DMDye]

I'm sorry, but if I'm searching the forum it is because I've already read the guide and haven't found that little detail of information I need. Could those two searches be separated?

Thank you.

[Seabody]

Yes.
If you type Gardening -guide, then the search tool will search only the forum.
Welcome to the forum!

Edited to make a bit more sense. Also edited to remove the second part, where it pretty much made no sense. - Seabody

[Pam]

That actually didn't make a lot of sense to me, Seabody, and when I typed "gardening - guide" in the search box, it still brought up both Guide and Forum links.

@DMDye:

Carl updated the search function to what we have now not very long ago.  Previously, we could only search the Forum and it just didn't work very well.  My best suggestion is to just look at the web address of the search results and see if it says "guide" or "forum" and choose the ones that are part of the Forum.

[Seabody]

@Pam
I'll edit it again to make some more sense.
Also, there is no space between the - and guide. It's literally "-guide"

[Pam]

@Pam
I'll edit it again to make some more sense.
Also, there is no space between the - and guide. It's literally "-guide"

Well, that's the strangest thing.  I typed "gardening -guide" and, sure enough, it brought up only forum links.  But that's odd.  It seems to me that if you type "-guide" as part of the search term that it would bring up only guide links.  Thanks for the tip, though, Seabody. 

[DMDye]

Pam: thank you, I will look again (I've known my eyes to be defective before) to see if I can tell the difference between one and the other. (meaning, I tried to look for that, but didn't find it).... Mind you, I'm on a 2-day-old Win7 64-bit comp - and I've *never* used Win 7 or 64-Bit before, so there are many, many things I'm missing (mentally/visually/intuitively...) you get the point.

Big jump from XP.  

Seabody: Thank you, I shall try that too.

[Carl]

This is a helpful skill, so I'll tack it on here. With google and other major search engines, you can search "site:carls-sims-3-forum.com blah" (without quotes) and it will show you any result for the subsequent query that comes from that domain. It would probably be a better option on our search, as any forum page that has the word guide in it would be excluded.

Anyway, that's helpful any time you want to search a specific site for a mention of something

[Seabody]

I've realised this lately and have meant to bring it up here in case anyone wants to read it.
Along the top of the Forum, below the News Bar, is a blue bar. Below it are guide links.
Along it, between "Help" and "Profile" is an option - "Search". It only searches the Forum. Pam, if this is what it used to be, I agree with you. It is sometimes temperamental.

[Schipperke]

If you type Gardening -guide, then the search tool will search only the forum.

How on earth did you discover that?

[TheChronicR]

How on earth did you discover that?

That's how you sort out songs on Windows Media Player, too.

[Schipperke]

That's how you sort out songs on Windows Media Player, too.

Thanks for explaining that, Chronic.  When I saw Seabody's post, I just sat here with my mouth open.  Of all the things I might have thought to type in, Gardening -guide, would never have occurred to me in a million years.  Obviously I've never used Windows Media Player!  I'm glad to have that mystery cleared up.

[TheChronicR]

Thanks for explaining that, Chronic.  When I saw Seabody's post, I just sat here with my mouth open.  Of all the things I might have thought to type in, Gardening -guide, would never have occurred to me in a million years.  Obviously I've never used Windows Media Player!  I'm glad to have that mystery cleared up.

You're welcome! I.e., if you want to browse all the Beatles albums except "Let It Be", you type "Beatles -let it be" in the search box of Windows Media Player, so it's (sort of) the same here, too.

[Seabody]

How on earth did you discover that?

It's Boolean logic. I'm a Computer Whiz (though I am not up to the same caliber as Carl), and things like that just jump out at me from books.

You're welcome! I.e., if you want to browse all the Beatles albums except "Let It Be", you type "Beatles -let it be" in the search box of Windows Media Player, so it's (sort of) the same here, too.

I think that by doing that, you'll be searching for "Beatles", "It", and "be". The best bet would be to search for 'Beatles -"let it be"'.

Also, a very helpful piece:

Enclosing a search term in double quotation marks ("") will search for exactly that phrase.
For instance, if Metro said "The painting bug may seem like it ruins you Dynasty, but in actual fact, you can fix it and still be eligible for HoF because you're using legit cheats...", then I could search for "ruins your Dynasty, but in actual", and it would return those exact words.

[TheChronicR]

Yes, that works for search engines like Google, too.