FAQ #6

I love the ironic situations created when well-established companies have their names co-opted by Texting-ese. Case in point, BRB Trucking. Of course, whether that inspires confidence or not is open to interpretation, but the point is, what you call something can be the difference between success and miserable failure (as in the famous, albeit fictional tale of the Chevy Nova).

That's why I'm a huge fan of search functions. "Search" says it all. It conjures up images of treasure hunters or research librarians, combing the pages of old, dusty tomes... OK, maybe not. But it does make my day a little brighter when I land on the homepage of some massive government site, and instead of sifting through pages of data one at a time, I type my request into that innocuous little box at the top and voila! There they are. 150 articles containing your search term. Beautiful.

Being the Google ninja that I am, I have come to rely heavily on search tools, but there's always been something missing. Haven't you ever been reading a book and wished you could search for that one sentence you know you read three chapters back and forgot to mark? Or thought a word was overused and wanted to actually count the number of times the author used it, just for grins?

You get the idea.

The first feature I always show people when I demo the e-edition is the "Search" function. I can type in any term and get links to all the articles in today's paper in which the term is found. Most of our subscribers know about this feature. Slightly less well-known is the "Advanced Search" feature that actually lets you search the last 30 days of back issues. At long last, we've arrived at what we're going to talk about today.

It's quick n' easy, but I want to make sure everyone knows how to use it, because it can be incredibly helpful when you're wanting to go back and find an article you only dimly remember reading.

Step 1: Log in.
Step 2: Click on Advanced Search, found under the Search box in the navigation bar.


Step 3: In the pop-up window, enter your search term and the dates of the issues you want to search.

You can enter multiple terms and choose to search for all the words or "at least one word." You can also choose what category of articles you'd like to search, such as editorials.

Step 4: Click Search, and every article within the specified dates that contains your search term will appear in the left panel. To read an article, click on it just as you normally would, and it will pop up in the right panel.

And you're done! Remember, you can only access 30 days of back issues, but that's usually plenty. I hope this was helpful, if for no other reason than you didn't know this feature existed. Happy hunting, and I'll see you all next week!