Searched but search not on "find on this page"

I entered a search in the "search forums" field. It was "texas hummingbird" in quotes. I got a list of hits and went to the first one. There were lots of posts in the thread, so I used my IE "find on this page" feature, in hopes of finding the particular post that mentioned "texac hummingbird", but it didn't find it. What was happening?

TIA
LAS

Are you sure you typed the text exactly the same way both times? I just did the same search for "texas hummingbird" and went to the first two threads in the results and both times the find on this page worked (I'm using a different browser, but that shouldn't make a difference)

Yes, I tried a couple more times, being very careful, making sure "match case" was not checked. I guess I have to blame i.e.

Was the first conversation in your search "Does anyone have these seeds?" and the second "CLOSED: Which Salvia"?

tia
las


This message was edited Aug 3, 2009 12:31 AM

Yes, those are the two--in both of them I found a post about Texas hummingbird sage using the find on page feature. I have no idea why it didn't work for you--I've used IE in the past and have never had trouble with the find on page feature.
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/p.php?pid=796332
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/p.php?pid=1742951

You might try just looking for the Texas or just looking for hummingbird, maybe what's tripping up your browser is the two words (although that shouldn't mess things up). My guess is if you try one of those you'll find it--you may have to weed through some extra results, but at least in the cases of both those threads, just typing in Texas will quickly find you the same posts.

Apparently it was the presence of the quotes that was the problem. Thanks very much for your help. It kept me going and trying things.

LAS

Sorry--I didn't realize you'd used quotes in the find on this page too otherwise I could have saved you some time! Anyway, glad you got it figured out!

OK, now that I know I can't put quotes in IE's "find on this page", what's the story in Search Forums? If I put portulaca margarita with no quotes, I get bunches and bunches of hits, none that I found for the two words together. If I put "portulaca margarita" with quotes, I get no hits. Does this mean that ther are no posts with the two words together, or does it mean there are no posts with that phrase enclosed in quotes?

Perhaps someone could create a post in the FAQs called "using quotes in searches." Or maybe there is already such a thing???

tia
las

Generally in search engines if you put something in quotes, it means the search engine will look for that exact phrase. If you leave out the quotes, it'll find pages where Portulaca and Margarita show up on a page together but aren't adjacent (so a nursery catalog that's selling Portulaca X and another type of plant with a cultivar name Margarita would give you a hit), and you can get some hits also that just have one word or the other but not both. The quotes themselves aren't actually part of the search so it's not looking for the character " anywhere, they just signal to the search engine that you want to search for an exact phrase.

The catch with the quotes is that the phrase has to appear exactly as you typed it or else it won't find it--if someone posted about portulaca margarita but they put the cultivar name in single quotes Portulaca 'Margarita' then your search won't catch it, or if there's a word in between portulaca and margarita and you search for "portulaca margarita" then it won't find it either since it is looking for the exact phrase portulaca margarita. My advice would be to start off trying your search with the quotes, but then if you don't find what you're looking for try getting rid of them.

The quote thing doesn't work with the find on this page feature since the way it works is to always look for the exact characters that you're typing...so if you type " then it'll look for " on the page. The find on page also will only find the exact phrase, so in my examples above if someone's typed Portulaca 'Margarita' or they say "I have a Portulaca cultivar called Margarita", the find on page will not give you any results if you type portulaca margarita. In cases like that, it's sometimes helpful just to type one word or the other--it would have no trouble finding portulaca by itself or margarita by itself.