First of all, go to the search box in the top right corner of your window: [![how to find search box][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. You can search for URLs linked from within a post by typing `url:example.com` into the search box. But probably you know all this already. The interesting bit is how to do more advanced searches. The official page on this is [here](https://scifi.stackexchange.com/help/searching), but I've rewritten it all below (and wow, did I learn a lot while doing so!) That help page is also linked to from the 'Advanced Search Tips' which you see on the right of every search results page: [![enter image description here][3]][3] **Warning:** entering a number into the search bar may give you the post with that number as its post ID rather than a list of all posts containing that number in their text. This applies if and only if the post with that ID is a *question*. For example, searching for `9331` here on meta will take you back to the question above, but searching for `9332` won't take you to this answer. Whether you want to see this as a bug or a feature is up to you; certainly, it has its uses but can also be annoying. Wildcard - 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 - 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 - 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](https://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 - 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 positively-scored answers count) - `closed:` (**for questions only**) - `duplicate:` (**for questions only**) - `migrated:` (**for questions only**) - `locked:` - `hasnotice:` - `wiki:` Dates - 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/LH98Gm.png [2]: https://i.sstatic.net/NLpvum.png [3]: https://i.sstatic.net/8rycQm.png