[HOW TO] Effectively Search On This Forum

[Frederuco]

Ok, I know this seems like it may not be necessary, but it can never hurt. Believe it or not, this book exists:

The scary part for me was that it is over 300 pages!

Part 1 - Basics

The search engine does not include any search terms that are less than 4 letters. Common terms like USB and DVD are tossed out so a search for USB DVD Drive only results in results for the word Drive which is pretty useless.

To get around this, make your 3 letter term a 4 letter one by using quotes and a space like this: "USB ""DVD "Drive. Notice how there is a space inside the quotes with USB and DVD. It will now give results that include USB, DVD and DRIVE.

Part 2 - Advanced Searching

Many times I am looking for a thread with a particular word in the title. Lets try Task Killer. As of today this query yields 96 results.

If I click on the Advanced Search and enter Task Killer and select Search Titles Only:

This yields only 2 threads.

There is also an option for posts by a user. If you are looking for something that was posted by a specific users and a keyword or two (perhaps buzzman's bluetooth iPhone tethering steps) by putting in Bluetooth iPhone and in the username buzzman

This yields 1 result, the exact post I was looking for.

Part 3 - Using Google to search the forum.

You can use Google to search any domain if you need to. simply add the phrase site:www.DOMAIN.com at the end of your query.

This will give you any results with Bluetooth, iPhone and buzzman on our site. It also allows you to use shorter phrases than our search (you can use two or three character words and not need quotes).

Now, you are probably saying to yourself, I will never remember the site:www.DOMAIN.com thing because I am not a Super Genius like Frederuco. If you ever forget, you can simply use the Advanced Search for Google by clicking the gear that is on the top right of the results page. Then select Advanced Search and in the Narrow Results By section add the domain in question where it says site or domain:

Part 4 - Other Forums

So you just bought an Infinity, Prime, TF300 or TF101 and you have a question. Do not skip over the forums for the other devices just because they are different. For the most part, they are very similar hardware, and the software is almost identical so long as you have upgraded to ICS or newer. Some devices will get JellyBean before others, but in general many answers are the same for all of the Asus tablets (or even other tablets). There are many of the exact same questions that new Infinity users are posting that were answered over a year ago for the TF101 on Honeycomb tablets (such as charging via USB), so browse through and search all of the forums and there is a good chance you can find the answer to your question without having to wait for someone to respond.

There you go. Hopefully that was not too painful, long or boring.

[Jeffrey]

Nice... I learn something new each day

[mary.7]

things like how to save links and such would be helpfull as now you have sent all of this wonderfulll 300 pages of help/advice I need to be able to bookmark it or does it just sit in my 100 post storage till i no lovger need it I presum
see very helpful but dummies dont know how to save links and when in trouble they get stressed and go to the forum
i did find somewhere b4 my posts and it says I have posted some 50 lol that dosent seem like many really and isnt what this forum is for?
you yourself have been very kind and helpfull Frederuco
I will send tis reply and see if I can access your reply/thread to my post
very thankfull
mary

[Frederuco]

things like how to save links and such would be helpfull as now you have sent all of this wonderfulll 300 pages of help/advice I need to be able to bookmark it or does it just sit in my 100 post storage till i no lovger need it I presum
see very helpful but dummies dont know how to save links and when in trouble they get stressed and go to the forum
i did find somewhere b4 my posts and it says I have posted some 50 lol that dosent seem like many really and isnt what this forum is for?
you yourself have been very kind and helpfull Frederuco
I will send tis reply and see if I can access your reply/thread to my post
very thankfull
mary

There is a link to this thread at the top of EVERY forum in the "Announcement" thread. Open the announce, then click on the search. There is also a link to DrMightySnake's Master Help Guide too.

[Swipe]

I know this is listed in the first post but I think it's worthwhile "bumping" this information for new members and as a reminder...

This method seems to give better results than the stock forum search function:

Google search box:

search topic site:transformerforums.com


ie: microSD site:transformerforums.com

[theimortal1974]

i found out something to add to the topic searching this forum effectively. if you use google search to search this domain an added benefit is you can search for phrases, like say "problem registering", will only return pages that actually have those two words together and not just on the same page. you can't do that in this site's search engine. you can put quotes in the search field but it will still only search for pages with one or both of those words and maybe 1% of them are actually put together.

anyone like me that's tried to search for a phrase will be glad to know this if they don't already. i don't know why so many search engines don't work with phrases.