When you make a free text search, the computer looks through all the text in all the messages to find what you are looking for. In other words: The computer looks for the sender, the title and it searches the text of the message. The computer does not care about when the message was sent. It searches all messages that are stored in the archives of the chosen list.
Read more about how to search with one word (or the beginning of a word), ,how to search with many words and how to search a specific period of time .

Here you search for words that you can find in the title( subject).
Read more about how to search with one word (or the beginning of a word) and how to search with many words.

You can search for the name of the sender or the e-mail address of the sender.. If you don't have the whole address you may try to look for a part of it.
Read more about how to search with one word (or the beginning of a word) and how to search with many words.

The Kidlink archives go back several years. It is therefore possible to save time by deciding what time limit you are going to search. Two good reasons for doing this, are , one, that the result of the search will be presented and, two, that the search result at most will display 100 messages. If you do not specify the time you may therefore miss interesting messages.

You can specify the time limit using many different methods:

• You can search messages since a specific date and/or until a specific date. You can write the date in two ways: 23 jul 1997 (This means that you make use of the English abbreviations for the months : jan, feb, mar, apr, may, jun. jul, aug, sep, oct, nov and dec) or 97-07-23

• It is possible to set a time limit in order to force the search engine to search in messages starting with a specified year. If you write 1997 or 97 in the "since"-box, you start the search with messages written 1st of January 1997.

• If you want to search messages ending a specified year, like 1996, then you write1996 or 96 in the "until"-box. Then you will search all messages received on the list until 31st of December 1996.

• You can also search messages since and/or until a specified month . If you write mar in the "since"-box, you will search messages from March 1st this year. If on the other hand you write mar in the "until"-box, you will search messages you will search for messages received up to March 31st. If you want to search in messages starting with since or until June 1996 you just write jun 1996 or jun 96 in the appropriate box.

• If you want to search for messages from this week you can write today-7 in "since"-box. If you want to search for messages from today or yesterday, write today or yesterday in the "since"-box.

You may search for one word or the beginning of a word. If you write the beginning of a word the search engine will display the first 100 messages containing words starting with these characters.

If you only have one word or a part of a word to search for it's really quite simple. Just write the word in the box and click on Search!

The computer does usually not distinguish between upper case and lower case.. So it's possible for you to write Kidcafe, kidcafe or KIDCAFE. The result will be the same. If you want the search engine to separate between upper and lower case you can use quotations. If you write "kidlink" or "KiDForum" you will only get messages that have words written exactly like the words above.

If you have two or more words, it gets a bit more difficult.... Then you have to pay some attention to the way you combine the words because you want the search engine to really find what you are looking for:

If you write more then one word , the search engine will look for a message that containsall the words .

If you are only interested in messages where the words are directly after each other, like in names, you write the words in parenthesis: (Martin Luther King).

If it doesn't matter if the words are directly after each other, you can put and between the words.

If you are looking for messages where one of the words is present, you can write or between the words.