# Is There A Way To Highlight a Poster’s Name in Searches?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-way-to-highlight-a-poster-s-name-in-searches/186942
**Category:** About This Message Board
**Created:** [July 8, 2003, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-way-to-highlight-a-poster-s-name-in-searches/186942 "2003-07-08T04:40:29Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Orange\_Skinner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Orange_Skinner)
#### Post date: [July 8, 2003, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-way-to-highlight-a-poster-s-name-in-searches/186942/1 "2003-07-08T04:40:29Z")
Is it possible to highlight the posters’ name when using the “Search by user name” feature? I find having the keywords put in red in the keyword search very helpful, and was wondering if the same could be done to a user’s name/entire post within a thread. I know you can adjust the engine to show results as posts, but I was wondering if this could be done as well.
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### Author:  [@xash](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xash)
#### Post date: [July 8, 2003, 10:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-way-to-highlight-a-poster-s-name-in-searches/186942/2 "2003-07-08T10:29:27Z")
The highlight function only works on text within posts, not on the username field on the left.
You could highlight the username where mentioned in any post by adding “&highlight=\” to the end of the thread url.
e.g.:
Searching for your username gives me this thread:
[http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=195706](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=195706)
If I want to highlight your name in any of the posts, I can add &highlight=Orange+Skinner at the end of the above url, giving me:
[http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=195706&highlight=Orange+Skinner](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=195706&highlight=Orange+Skinner)
Alternately, if you want to locate a post from a specific poster within a given thread, you could use your browser’s “search on this page function” and enter the member name in the search field. For Internet Explorer this is at Edit/Find.
To search through a thread that is multiple pages long you could use the “Show printable version” link and then do a “search on this page”.
Here’s another neat feature:
If you’re only tracking whether a specific poster has replied to a thread, just click on the number in the “Replies” column on the index page. This will tell you whether that specific poster has posted [again] to the thread.
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### Author:  [@Orange\_Skinner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Orange_Skinner)
#### Post date: [July 11, 2003, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-way-to-highlight-a-poster-s-name-in-searches/186942/3 "2003-07-11T00:38:45Z")
Thanks, **xash**.