# More forums that search options



## l_DiNgO_l

Hi, 

I've always wondered why there was an "only French" forum (for example) and there wasn't  a "French definitions" or "French forum search" option on the search tools of WR... 

I know it's also the case of other forums. 


Sincerely


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## Jana337

What do you mean by "French definitions"?  We do not have a forum like that.

In the search engine (http://forum.wordreference.com/search.php), you can search
- the vocabulary forum separately,
- the grammar forum separately,
- French Only separately,
- Themed Lists separately,
- Resources separately,
- French-Spanish separately,
- any combination of the above (mark the relevant ones with the Ctrl key),
- all of them at once (by searching the whole category called French and keeping the default option "Also search in child forums").

If you mean the dictionary rather than the forum itself, there's no forum like "French definitions". The only monolingual WR dictionaries are Spanish and English.


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## l_DiNgO_l

Hi jana337,

I know that. 

What I was trying to say is that there is no way to access that kind of forums from the main page, or typing a word on the search tool.

You have to go in the forum page, and the go to the forum that corresponds and  once in the forum launch a research for the word you want to find...
That and the way you just told me


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## ireney

I may have missed something, but, from the main page, if you choose "Advanced search" you can choose whichever forums you want searched .


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## l_DiNgO_l

ireney said:


> I may have missed something, but, from the main page, if you choose "Advanced search" you can choose whichever forums you want searched .




That is right and that's what it's all about...

Wouldn't it be possible to make a shorter and easier way?

Ex: The word "sociétal" in French has an interesting threat in "only French Forum" but you can't consult it unless you launch an advanced research...


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## Jana337

I still don't understand. On this very page, I scrolled up, clicked on Search and copied *sociétal*. I got 14 results and the FS thread was among them.

If you are a Firefox user and want to be able to open advanced search without clicking, you can use the Alt+4 shortcut (more here, the brown text).


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## jann

Let's draw a distinction between using the *dictionary look-up* and the *forum search engine*.  


The *dictionary look-up* (search button at the top of every page) searches the WordReference dictionary that you specify from the list.  At the end of a dictionary entry, it also returns thread titles that contain your search words from the relevant forum.  "Relevant" means that the forum uses the same languages at the dictionary does.  Therefore searches in the FR-ES and ES-FR dictionaries will return thread titles from the Español-Français bilingual forum.... but not from Français Seulement, and not from Sólo Español.  Translating dictionaries are not linked to monolingual forums. The dictionary look-up only exists for dictionaries that exist on WordReference.  There are only two ways for us to offer a dictionary:
 Mike Kellogg (our forum administrator) acquires the rights to an existing dictionary and adds it to the site
 Mike Kellogg builds a new dictionary himself and adds it to the site
Mike is working all the time to add dictionaries, but since we have neither purchased nor created a Français-définitions dictionary, we do not currently have one available.  Since we do not have a monolingual French dictionary, it is not possible to use the dictionary look-up to find threads in the Français Seulement forum.

The *forum search engine* does not look in the WR dictionaries at all.  It does, however, search entire posts (not just titles) unless you tell it not to.  If you launch a simple search from the homepage of a forum, the results will be limited to that forum.  If you launch an advanced search from any location, you can specify which forum to search (and many other options).


So for now, if you wish to search for interesting threads discussing e.g., _sociétal_, you have three options.  Your choice will depend on the language in which you want to read the replies:
 Launch an advanced search from any page and specify any/all/as many French language forums as you wish (you can simultaneously search all French forums, just FS and ES-FR, etc).
 Search for _sociétal_ in the FR-ES dictionary to read threads on the Español-Français forum that contain this word in the title.
 Search for _sociétal_ in the FR-EN dictionary to read threads that contain this word in the title on French-English Vocabulary and French-English Grammar
But if you want to search Français Seulement and only Français Seulement, you have only two options:
 Go to the FS homepage and click "search this forum"
 From any forum page, click "advanced search" and select FS from the list.
Note that (as of today) there are only two results on the FS forum... and neither of those threads contains the word _sociétal_ in the title, which means that even if we did have a French monolingual dictionary, you would not be able to find either of these threads via the dictionary look-up.  

Does this help?


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## l_DiNgO_l

Excellent explanation jann. 

It's all clear now


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