Searching forums?

janet it is hard to see but at the very top of this page there is a small magnifying glass and the word "Search" in dim gray letters. click on that and then you'll see what to do.

and then you will pull your hair out because it just half a step better than useless.

Google search, properly framed, is much more accurate.

Ask away....

Unfortunately, I learned that you can't...the search engine is totally ill-equipped (it's not google). That's why people will ask the same thing over and over and regulars will continue to get peeved...the problem is one literally has to scour old threads manually because the search engine stinks. No wonder it's faster for people just to ask whatever without bothering to look...it's too much effort.

ahh I have to click the menu bar to get the search thing; normally with bookmarks on, I only get the thread. Am feeling slightly less stupid now.

I find that if you use google and include rick steves forum in your search a lot comes up.

Or use tripadvisor.com that has specific cities in their selection of forums... like janettravels44 does and has many timely insights for European travel.

George, I'm not sure I understand your response. Can you search for RS forum threads on Trip Advisor? Janet is asking how to search for threads on this forum, not on TA.

The search function on this site is quite poor. On the plus side, though, the forum allows itself to be indexed by google and they have a great search engine. So here's what you do: type this into google

how to get to paris from cdg site:community.ricksteves.com

and you'll get all the answers from the forum. Replace "how to get to paris from cdg" with whatever you want to search for. If you click on the "search tools" pulldown at the top of the page you can even choose a date range or other options.

People have been complaining for at least 11 yrs to no avail about not being able to search for previously answered questions....
RS must have their reasons for making it impossible.

Go to Google and type site:ricksteves.com along with your search terms

I think people use this site because it could be their first time going to Europe (France) and it can be quite overwhelming getting off a 10-12 hour flight and trying to get into Paris by subway, taxi or bus and lots of travellers aren't familiar with the trains and subways . This site makes them feel comfortable what some think is a silly question, but to them it isn't .

I could never understand why some people on this forum appear to get so perturbed if someone posts a question that had already been discussed and answered in the past. After all, it's not as if you are forced to read or answer the question. In addition, there may be some updated information on that topic that someone can share.

And, not everyone will have read the useful information in this thread about how to find information on this forum using google search.

I was looking for a recent post on a specific topic and didn't see it by browsing, so I used the RS search function and it came up with 5-6 threads, some going back several years. There was no indication of which forum each post was on, or the date of the post - they certainly weren't in chronological order. I kept using "show more" and it seemed to have a limited of 20-30 items, none what I was looking for. I used the name of a place and it seemed that it was only giving me threads that had that name in the title. The place name was not in the title of the one I was looking for.

I gave up.

If you go to google's advanced search, you can put the RS travel forum in as the domain name, that usually gives faster, better results.