Searching for messages in the archive

Searching by keyword

Desktop browser:

1. Go to the group’s Messages page.
2. In the Search box at the upper right of the page, enter the keywords you want to search for.
3. Click the magnifying glass icon at the right of the Search box.

Mobile device:

1. Go to the group’s Messages page.
2. Tap the magnifying glass icon at the top right of the page.
3. In the Search popup, enter the keywords you want to search for, then tap Search.

You can filter the search results by clicking or tapping the Tools button at the top of the page to display tools that allow you to:

• Specify a date range: Click or tap the Any Time button and select a range from the dropdown menu.
• Group the messages into their topics: Select the Collapse Topics checkbox.
• Exclude any message signatures that contain the keywords: Select the Exclude Signatures checkbox.

Tips:

• The message search engine uses the standard Boolean operators AND, OR, and NOT. If you include these operators in your search query, you must put them in all uppercase (otherwise, the search engine assumes you are looking for those actual words). If you enter more than one word in the Search box, the AND operator is implied.
• You can search for exact phrases by putting them in quotes. Example: “message formatting”
• The search engine matches only whole words. However, you can include the wildcard character, an asterisk (*), to find variations of a word. Example: A search on telescop* will find telescope, telescopes, telescoping, and so on.

Searching by posted date

1. Go to the group’s Messages page.
2. Click or tap the Filter button at the top of the page.
3. Click or tap the Any Time button and select a date range from the dropdown menu.

Searching for messages from a specific group member

The Groups.io message search engine does not include message From and To fields in its searches. If you want to search for all messages that were posted by a specific group member:

1. Go to the group’s Messages page.
2. Find and expand a recent message that was posted by the member in question.
3. Click or tap the member’s display name and select All Messages By This Member from the dropdown list. 

When the search results are displayed, you can click or tap the Tools button at the top of the page to filter the results further, if desired.

Searching by hashtags

You can use these methods to search for messages by hashtags: 

• When you are searching for messages by keyword, include a hashtag in your search string. Ensure that you include the hashtag character (#).
• On the Topics page or the Messages page, click or tap the Filter button at the top of the page, then click the Hashtags button. Select one or more hashtags from the dropdown list, then scroll to the bottom of that dropdown list and click or tap Search.
  Note: If you select more than one hashtag, the system searches for topics that have all the selected hashtags (that is, the search is an AND operation, not an OR operation).
• Go to the group’s Hashtags page. You can then click or tap a hashtag on that page to display the messages that have it.

Searching by message number 

To search for a message using its ID number:

1. Go to the group and display posts in Messages view or Expanded view.
2. In the Msg # field that appears at the upper right next to the Date link, enter the number of the message you are searching for.
   Note: On a mobile device, you might need to use landscape orientation to see the Msg # field.
3. Press or tap Enter.
4. In the search results, the message will not be at the top of the page unless it happens to fall on a page break. If the message is not at the top of the page, you must scroll to find it:
   • In Messages view, the message you searched for will have a vertical blue bar on its left edge. Scroll down the page until you see that blue bar.
   • In Expanded view, scroll until you come to the message with the number that you searched for. (Expanded view does not include a vertical blue bar indicating the specific message.)