<p>I am slowly becomig addicted to cc, learning tons .
I find that I have to resort to putting time limits on myslef, otherwise I would be reading cc pages all the time:)
Having said that I have to ask some savvy users for help - how do you search for archived threads, how do you search for old threads of some posters?
There are some posters here whose story I would like to read from the beginning, since it seems like I might learn a lot without asking all you guys repetitive questions. It is easy to search mine old post since I did not posted that many , yet. But in the case of people that have been here for years, I find it very challenging.
Thank You !</p>
<p>That’s a great question. I asked a question during the summer about work study, got a most comprehensive (and very understandable) response, and now I can’t locate it any more. I should have cut & pasted it into a word document. </p>
<p>Shudda, wudda, cudda.</p>
<p>Old, unused pages “expire” on CC after a while. But they still exist somewhere - try searching for them on Google.</p>
<p>I tried google search on cc but it still does not bring me all the results.</p>
<p>In the Google search engine on this forum (under “Search”), type “archive”. It then takes you to the archive, where you can search to your heart’s content.</p>
<p>Never mind; doesn’t quite work. I’ll keep trying - I remember that there was something counterintuitive about getting to the archives.</p>
<p>The earliest messages I can recover seem to be from about three years ago, fall of 2004.
Anybody of you super users has ideas? Does it really get lost in the cyberspace :)</p>
<p>this is a great question…using my own posting history since 3/05 as test material, here’s what I found.</p>
<p>Of course, I can find all of my started threads back to 3/05, by going into my profile (any CC member can do this for any other CC member) and hitting “find all threads by Papa Chicken”…this gives me the entire list, which is limited to 250 entries (& I have fewer that 250 threads that I’ve started.) If I hit the “find all posts button”…I am limited to the most recent 250 posts.</p>
<p>OK, so in the CC search page (not the new google page)…if I play with the field selections on the left side, while specifying my user name on the right, I can of course find my most recent stuff, and I can also find my oldest stuff by sorting by “last posting date” (or thread start date) and “ascending order” instead of the default descending order…its oddly sorted…but that gets my oldest stuff, limited to 250 hits.</p>
<p>What I can’t search, unless I add some key words (& my screen name doesn’t help) is all of the stuff in between…& thats quite a bit.</p>
<p>the Google feature gives me slightly over a thousand returns (& I couldn’t sort them by date), but my post count is 50% above that, so that doesn’t appear to be a way to thoroughly go through someone’s post history as well. Problem is that many peolple’s life stories may not be on threads they created (which are a bit easier to find by user, so long as they don’t have >250 threads), but threads of other origins are not findable throughout ones post history that I can see, except for the most recent history and their initial history.</p>
<p>I’ll be watching to see if anyone else figures out a better way.</p>
<p>btw, I can find my oldest stuff back to 3/05, so its all still there someplace, just not easily findable. I think there were some database changes back then which may cut off the database some time earlier.</p>
<p>"just"aMom-I think this is what you are looking for.<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=347033&highlight=work+study[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=347033&highlight=work+study</a> </p>
<p>Just click on your screen-name and one of the options that pops up will be "find more posts by "just"aMom "</p>
<p>You can find the older archived discussion links at the bottom of the page in the gray band. Look for both links: College Discussion Classic - Text Version. The threads are sorted descending from most recent posts to the beginning posts. </p>
<p>In the Classic archives you can go to the College Admissions sub-forum, and you will find archives going back to 2001 at the bottom of the page. Unfortunately the archives cannot be selectively searched for key terms. </p>
<p>The Text Version contains all the data for the newer CC version. It can be narrowed by sub-forums, and then you can look at all the posts for a particular school, for example.</p>
<p>I find the search function to be the most efficient use of CC. Most terms can be narrowed sufficiently to yield prior years discussion in the search results. However if the terms are too broad, the practical limitation of allowing only 250 pages in the search results cuts off some excellent past discussion. If there are currently 250 pages of discussion on a topic in 2007, the results will not show the prior year posts. </p>
<p>If you have a more narrowly discussed topic, the “show results” will include all the prior years discussion up to that 250 page threshold. It would be nice to be able to use the advanced search to change the date parameters on the current forum to go back further than one year or allow the next 250 pages, and so on.</p>
<p>my-3-sons, the “find more posts” is also limited by the 250 page search threshold. If the OP is trying to follow the story of a poster going back years, only the most recent 250 pages will show. You can find prior years on the less prolific posters.</p>
<p>Perhaps that helps. </p>
<p>(As a long time reader, I too understand your fascination with CC. I definitely put limits on my time here. Happy searching.)</p>
<p>Thank you my-3-sons, I don’t know why i couldn’t find that.</p>
<p>“small print” 
Thanx.
Any better methods?</p>
<p>“bump”
any more tips???</p>
<p>3Ks-I realize the limitations, but "just"aMom (not the OP) was looking for a recent question she had posted and this seemed like the easiest way for her to find it. </p>
<p>There really is a ton of info out there and I, too, understand everyone’s obsession…er, fascination.:)</p>