# Forum Search function does not find a result (because of  smiley?)



## Peterdg

When I do a forum search for keywords: Victor Manuel
I get a list that does not include this post.

I suspect that is because in that post "Victor Manuel" is followed by a smiley.


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## swift

Salut, pointvirgule (et Peter !)


pointvirgule said:


> It looks like this particular thread is invisible to the search engine. Are there many other threads that can't be found?


There is an announcement on top of the forum's page:

Note: The forum search will not be giving full results until midnight, ES Eastern Time due to maintenance.


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## pointvirgule

Ah, it was right there in front of my face (now egg-covered)! 
Thanks swift.


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## Peterdg

Hello Swift,

The fact that the forum search function does not find that thread when looking for "Victor Manuel" is something I discovered already some days ago, before there was a forum search maintenance message.

Anyway, the maintenance is over now and the search function still does not find that specific thread when looking for Victor Manuel.


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## swift

Hi, Peter. 

I'm sure your problem has nothing to do with yesterday's maintenance. I was saying that pointvirgule wasn't able to perform any searches because the maintenance was taking place at that time.


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## Drake15

Peterdg said:


> When I do a forum search for keywords: Victor Manuel
> I get a list that does not include this post.
> 
> I suspect that is because in that post "Victor Manuel" is followed by a smiley.



Yes, I suspect the same thing. I don't know if it's possible to make the forum still find that post when searching for *Victor Manuel*.

What you CAN do, though, is add an asterisk at the end of "Manuel". That would act as a wildcard and return partial matches too.
It will return posts containing "Manuelle", "Manuel" and even a user named DonManuel_CH. 

*Edit*
I tested it and apparently we can use the same advanced functions available on PHPBB Forums:



> Place *+* in front of a word which must be found and *-* in front of a word which must not be found. Put a list of words separated by *|* into brackets if only one of the words must be found. Use * as a wildcard for partial matches.


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## Peterdg

Thanks Drake! The wildcard is a great idea. I just tested it and indeed, it works!

I didn't know the forum search function supported that feature.


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## mkellogg

Peterdg said:


> in that post "Victor Manuel" is followed by a smiley.



Thanks. I'll add this to my list of things to fix with search. Expect to see more of those "search maintenance" messages as I work out the bugs


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