First of all, go to the search box in the top right corner of your window:

[![enter image description here][1]][1]

You can type any word or collection of words into there to get a list of all posts on the SFF site containing all of those words. Putting `-` before a word will *exclude* posts containing that word, so e.g. `voldemort -dumbledore` will give you all posts that mention Voldemort but not Dumbledore. Quotes enable you to search for phrases rather than just collections of words: e.g. `"Gandalf the White"` will give you all posts containing the phrase "Gandalf the White", not all posts containing those three words somewhere.

But probably you know all this already. The interesting bit is how to do more advanced searches. The official page on this is [here](http://scifi.stackexchange.com/help/searching), but I've rewritten it all below - and wow, did I learn a lot while doing so!

Wildcard
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Include `*` in a search term to do a wildcard search: e.g. `Wooki*` will give you all questions containing Wooki, Wookie, Wookiee, or any other possible misspelling.

Tags
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To search for questions only in a certain tag, include the tag name in square brackets. E.g. `white tower [wheel-of-time]` will give you all posts in the [tag:wheel-of-time] tag which mention the White Tower.

To broaden your search to more than one tag, you can use `or` between tags. E.g. `[star-trek-tos] or [star-trek-tng]` will give you all posts in *either* of the two tags [tag:star-trek-tos], [tag:star-trek-tng]. And as with individual words, adding `-` before a tag *excludes* posts in that tag, so e.g. `[star-trek] -[star-trek-tos]` will give you all questions with the [tag:star-trek] tag but *not* the [tag:star-trek-tos] tag.

The wildcard search mentioned above can also be very useful here: searching `[star-trek-*]` will give you all posts in any of the tags [tag:star-trek-tos], [tag:star-trek-tng], [tag:star-trek-ds9], [tag:star-trek-voyager], [tag:star-trek-data], and so on (I can't even be bothered to list them all!)

You can search only in tags you have marked as 'favourites' by appending `intags:mine` to your search terms.

Users
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You can search for posts only by a given user provided you know their user ID: e.g. `user:976` will give you all posts by [DVK](http://scifi.stackexchange.com/users/976/dvk-in-exile). If you're searching for your *own* posts, you don't have to remember your own user ID: `user:me` will suffice.

You can also search among a user's 'favourited' questions by adding `infavorites:976` or `infavorites:mine` to your search terms.

Types of post
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You can search only questions, or only answers, by including `is:question` or `is:answer` in your search.

You can narrow down the range for number of votes, views, and (for a question) answers as follows:

- `score:-1` or `score:-1..` will both return posts with a score greater than or equal to -1
- `views:500..1000` or `views:500-1000` will return posts with between 500 and 1000 views
- `answers:..3` (**for questions only**) will return questions with less than or equal to 3 answers

You can also search only for posts specifying - or not specifying - certain specific criteria. In each of the following cases, you can put `1` or `yes` or `true` after the colon to find posts that *do* satisfy that criterion, and `0` or `no` or `false` to find posts that *don't*.

- `isaccepted:` (**for answers only**)
- `hascode:`
- `hasaccepted:` (**for questions only**)
- `isanswered:` (**for questions only**; only accepted or positively-scored answers count)
- `closed:` (**for questions only**)
- `duplicate:` (**for questions only**)
- `migrated:` (**for questions only**)
- `locked:`
- `hasnotice:`
- `wiki:`

Dates
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You can narrow down to specific dates or date ranges for posts, using `created:` to specify when the posts were created and `lastactive:` to specify when they were last active (created, edited, etc.).

Dates can be entered in the following formats:

- **Absolute dates**, using one, two, or all three of the Y/M/D possibilities. `created:2012..2013` searches posts created from January 1, 2012 to December 31, 2013; `created:2012` searches posts created from January 1, 2012 to December 31, 2012; `created:2012-04..2012-05` searches posts created between April 1, 2012 and May 31, 2012; `lastactive:2012-04-03` searches posts which were last active between 12:00 AM on April 3, 2012 and 11:59 PM on April 3, 2012.

- **Relative dates**. `1y`, `1m`, and `1d` are shorthand for "last year", "last month", and "yesterday": e.g., if today is 17 March 2016, `created:1m` searches posts created between 1 February 2016 and 29 February 2016. (Any other number can be substituted for 1.)  
If you want to see all the posts active in the last three months, use `lastactive:3m..` On 17 March 2016, that will show posts from 17 December 2015 up to the most recently active. You can close the range as well: `lastactive:3m..1m`.

Of course, all times are in UTC.


  [1]: https://i.sstatic.net/NLpvum.png