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Is there a way to do more specific searches other then one or more word searches in the search bar?

If I wanted to search a particular users questions, or answers for a specific word, is that possible? For example, let's say I wanted to do a search on my own questions for the word "yoda"? Or if I wanted to search all of @praxis's answers for the words "JMFB is Cool" how would I do that?

Is there a way to search comment lines? For example I would want to search all of @n_soong's comments for "TL;DR?"

If it's not possible to do so, is this a feature that could be added to the site?

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    Uh, just to make sure, you have seen the respective section in the help center and the excerpt therefrom that appears on the actual search page, have you?
    – TARS
    Commented Sep 15, 2015 at 16:20
  • @TARS No, thanks for pointing it out. I'm heading out now, but I'll check it out when I get back later.
    – JMFB
    Commented Sep 15, 2015 at 16:21
  • For comment text search, you can use the Data Explorer. I've created a query to search comments based on text you provide
    – Möoz
    Commented Sep 16, 2015 at 0:36
  • The chances of having comment searches added to site functionality are probably close to zero. Comments aren't intended to be permanent content, and they're just not considered very important, so the SE team is unlikely to dedicate development resources towards it.
    – Anthony Grist
    Commented Sep 17, 2015 at 11:31
  • Dupe-closing this since I've now posted a definitive proposed-FAQ question about the search facility.
    – Rand al'Thor Mod
    Commented Mar 17, 2016 at 14:02

2 Answers 2

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When you do a search on the site, there is a link at the top right of the result page that says "advanced search tips". Click that for some additional query options, or you can look at the search help page for more complete info.

Specific to your question, you can search by users using the user: [userid] option

If you wanted to search for the instance of "yoda" in all of your questions/answers, you could search for user:me yoda.

To search for @praxis talking about you, you might search for user:40294 jmfb

You can add in options like is:question or is:answer if you wish to restrict your results accordingly.

At this time there is no reliable way to search all comments. Google indexes the first few, but not all of them.

Some guy named Jeff Atwood acknowledged this missing feature.

You can't at the moment. It's annoying to me, too.

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If I wanted to search a particular users questions, or answers for a specific word, is that possible?

Yes. To search for a particular user's posts, use the string user:1234 where 1234 is the user's ID. You can find the user's ID by clicking on his profile and noting the ID in the search field in the upper right corner of the page. If you are searching your own posts you can use user:me. To restrict the search to questions use is:question, and for answers use is:answer.

Is there a way to search comment lines?

I don't think so.

If it's not possible to do so, is this a feature that could be added to the site?

This should probably be a question for the main meta site.

Here are the Advanced Search Tips on the search page.

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There are even more details on the search help page.

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