search function for the forums?

Within the forum search function, you can list multiple "and" search criteria:

A search within the sub-category with these two qualifiers:
Trip-reports warsaw

Will refine your search to those with both strings.

This search will limit to mentions of Eurail where the topic is "posted in France" (in other words, posted in the France sub-category):

Search term:
travel-forum "posted in france" eurail

The search term "travel-forum" (must be in quotes) limits it to the forum, rather than the entire website.

The search term "posted in france" eliminates results posted in other forum categories.

And the search term "eurail" is your topic of interest.

Here's how you do it with Google. Put this string in a Google search box (without the quotes) -

"site:https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/germany berlin"

Wow, thanks CWSocial! I didn't know that we could limit searches like that.

Within the RS Travel Forum search functon you cannot search by specific category forum. For example you can't search just within the Germany Reviews forum. Many of us would love this availability but right now it doesn't exist - at least that's my understanding. You can however search within specific forums by using Google search as Gerry M showed.

Thanks Everyone! Very useful suggestions.

When you get your page of matches from the search I posted an example of above, you can refine it further. At the top of the page of results there's a button marked "Tools". That brings up a series of filters where you can narrow it down with a number of variables. Amongst those tools is "Advanced Search" which provides an interface for refining your search further.

Operators, like the "site:" example I used above can be useful.

https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433

Quotes will give you exact verbatim matches to your particular search and can be combined with operators in the string.

I remember posting some time ago about Jeff Mills at Tresor, Berlin and I was able to find my exact post with the following string (again, remove the outermost quote marks and copy paste into a Google search) -

"site:https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/germany "tresor" "

https://blog.google/products/search/how-were-improving-search-results-when-you-use-quotes/

The search engine locally here on https://community.ricksteves.com/ is somewhat rudimentary, as I'm sure Webmaster will agree. You're always going to get more useful results from Google.

Some great tips here. Thanks GerryM for sharing how to search this forum on Google.

Does anyone know a way to limit results by date range? I'd love a way to only get results from, say, the past year or past 6 months.

Filtering by date is available under the "Tools" menu at the top of your page of Google results.

Does anyone know a way to limit results by date range? I'd love a way to only get results from, say, the past year or past 6 months.

You can do that on the RS search results page. On the left when you choose 'Travel Forum' for your results it will let you select for 6months and newer, 1 year and newer, 2 years and newer, or All.

Well, Jane, it turns out the forum search method I listed isn't perfect. It does help and I'll try to discover further refinements.

A skillful Google search can be highly accurate.

You can do that on the RS search results page. On the left when you choose 'Travel Forum' for your results it will let you select for 6months and newer, 1 year and newer, 2 years and newer, or All.

I don't know why I never noticed that! Thanks Nancy!