# Search help, please

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/search-help-please/353190>\
**Category:** About This Message Board\
**Created:** [April 18, 2006, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/search-help-please/353190 "2006-04-18T18:06:27Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Gary\_Robson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gary_robson/32/3448_2.png) [@Gary\_Robson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Robson)\
**Post date:** [April 18, 2006, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/search-help-please/353190/1 "2006-04-18T18:06:27Z")

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I’m trying to find posts containing a specific phrase. I went to “advanced search,” put my search phrase in quotes, and hit go. Not only don’t most of the resulting posts have the entire phrase in them, but many don’t even have all of the _words_ in my phrase!

How do I perform this search?

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**Author:** ![rowrrbazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rowrrbazzle/32/414_2.png) [@rowrrbazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rowrrbazzle)\
**Post date:** [April 18, 2006, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/search-help-please/353190/2 "2006-04-18T19:21:26Z")

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AFAIK you can’t do that with this search. The best you can do it put " and " between each word, and that’ll get you posts that contain all the words, no matter how much they’re separated in an individual post.