I have been trying to retrieve some of old threads from 2001 and 2002, I tried my e-mail address, all sorts of combinations of words on search function without any luck, remember there were some old posts on how to, but couldn't retrieve them either.

I would be very grateful if someone could show me how to do it.

I'm not sure I understand the problem. If a post is from 2001-2002, you can click on it and read it like any other. I just did a search for a word that I know rarely appears, and it listed posts back to 1999 and all I did was click on the old ones and they opened normally.

If you can't think of a rare word that appears in a post that far back that you want to find, it could be a problem, I can see that, if you personally make a lost of posts. For example, if you just list all your own posts, you'd have to keep clicking the button at the bottom to go to the next 50 ones and it would take a while, but not forever, if you really wanted to do it.

I think you used to be able to use the URL to get to the end, but it doesn't seem to be working now when I try it so I won't go into details (changing the start= number of the URL for your own posts).

I don't understand the problem either but maybe we need more info. Did you originate or respond to these posts? If so then click on your screen name above to pull up all your threads.

If you did not post to a thread good luck finding one that old. Many older posts have lost their indexing so you can't find them doing a search. For example, I did a very long Malta trip report in 2004 but it doesn't come up when searching for Malta or any other town I may have in the report. The only way I can find it is by my name and then scroll through the screens until I spot it.

I'm not clear on why you're searching by your email ID as you have chosen the option not to display your email in your posts.

Why don't you post the topic of these threads and maybe we can help you find them. But you need to be specific in what you're looking for.

Christina - I think you're right about chaning the thread number in the URL. I've tried to do this recently and it didn't work.

Give up until the improvements Katie says are in the works for later this Fall. Unfortunately there really is no way to reliably find old threads.

There WAS a way until maybe a year or so ago. You could use google's advance search to find just about any thread by searching only on domain name fodors.com/forums But now google doesn't deal w/ the frames format at Fodors so that method is out.

So - long story short, there really isn't a way to find most threads. The exception is IF one posted to the thread, and IF one isn't very active so doesn't have hundreds or thousands of posts -- then the thread can be located by clicking on that person's name.

My take is that JudyC is trying to search for threads that were started in 2001/2002 and have a hard time finding them.

My observation here is there seems to be a "black hole" here in the early 2000s. When I do searches, I'd get threads from recent years, then all of a sudden it jumps to 1999 or older, with the early 2000s missing.

If it's a thread that JudyC has replied to, then she can eventually find it after clicking on her name and scrolling thru pages after pages of old threads.

There used to be a short-cut which one can "skip ahead" to older threads by specifying what # you want to start looking from. For example, if one averages replying to 500 threads per year, then this person can specify in the URL to start listing the threads beginning from thread #3000 (~6 years) to look for threads from 2002.

However, Fodors techies got rid of this short cut in the revamp the last couple of months.

&quot;<i>However, Fodors techies got rid of this short cut in the revamp the last couple of months.</i>&quot;

yeah - I hated that &quot;improvement&quot;. Why can't techies ask users how they use the site instead of improving (?) it until it is basically unusable. When I worked for the State I was a liaison between a major department and outside tech consultants. They used ENTIRELY different languages and looked at things through different prisms for sure. I mostly ended up being a translator

The thechies wanted the latest whistles and bells and the users just wanted the darn thing to work simply and reliably and have features they used in real life.

&lt;&lt; There used to be a short-cut which one can &quot;skip ahead&quot; to older threads by specifying what # you want to start looking from.&gt;&gt;

Wow - - I really don't come around here very much any more. I didn't know that this was gone. And I see some other changes pertinent to the posts from the &quot;way back&quot; time.

For one thing, all those tags! from a period when they did not exist in any way, shape or form... did someone do those by hand?

And equally interesting is that there is a &quot;clickable link&quot; on the author's name that did not exist before 2003. There wasn't even any control over who you said you were when posting (remember all the ugliness that was associated with that?)

There must be old posts that could not be matched up to a post 2003-identity - - were they simply deleted?

I can no longer find my very first post ever. It should come up with rbmd bonvecchiati or rex bonvecchiati - - and it does not. But I think I was responding to someone - - not the original poster.

Maybe the original poster &quot;died off&quot; in this case.

Fodors forum &quot;archaeology&quot; used to be an interesting side hobby - - and a forte of mine, to some extent. Maybe now a lost art.

Just like we _lost_ &quot;Art&quot;...

Best wishes,

Rex

If you enter <b>&quot;fodor's travel guides&quot; site:fodors</b><b>.com</b> in Google, you will get 168,000 links that were indexed prior to that dark day when Google dropped support for frames.

By adding your search criteria to the above, you might be able to find what you're looking for. It's worth a shot.

Yes rex, you were the one who &quot;taught&quot; me how to pull up my old posts without scrolling through pages and pages of screen. That was such a perk, especially since I'm one of those who tend to post a lot...

I did complain about this to editor Katie, and I think she said she'd bring that up to the technical staff. I haven't retried the trick since so I don't know if they had re-installed it or not.

Many thanks for all the replies, I was trying to find some of my own old posts about London, Brittany and other places from 2000 to 2002, it was before one could click on one's own screen name to retrieve it.

Rex; I did try to follow your old method (learned it years ago); unfortuunately, as mentioned by Janisj, the function is no longer available now, what a pity!

I used to post as JC, or cyc at hotmail from 1999.

I am not really having much luck with the technique you describe, robes...

Sorry but &quot;good luck&quot; is all I thought when I read the title of your post
;-)

rex - show me how you're entering your search criteria.

If there is a post on a particular topic you want to read, I would try to remember some rather unique word in it, that's the best way. You could find them easier if you hadn't changed screennames, as you could just keep clicking on the bottom and it wouldn't take that long (I know because I got through several years of your posts in just a couple clicks).

There is a problem in that some posts were not indexed in some years back, I forgot about that. A couple I made are impossible to find now, even though I know some words that were in them. However, I have searched for some posts that were indexed in 2001-2003, and they just appeared, so it isn't all of them in those years are missing.

Thanks again for the replies.

Again, I tried &quot;Marloes Sand&quot; for wales, &quot;Pointe du Raz&quot; for Brittany, &quot;Wren's churches&quot; for London, still no luck. I shouldn't have changed my screen name after 2002, a pity.

Okay, r...

&quot;fodor's travel guides&quot; rex panoramic site:fodors.com

on Google yields only post (tid) 64929 (started in Jan 99, still getting topped in Oct 2007)

Searching here on Fodor's for

rex panoramic

yields only post (tid) 89171 (began and ended in Dec 1999)

Neither is what I am looking for...

There are a jillion other examples - -

rex meaux
rex bonvecchiati
rex assisi

These are a few that I thought would lead me to very specific posts...

H-m-m, I tried this (Rex's logical)method as a poster from those long gone days (2000) and tried 'lj termini' which should have brought up a knock-'em-down, drag-'em-out fight with somebody whose 'handle' I have mercifully forgotten.

It doesn't...it only brings postings on the topic from the recent past (i.e 2 years).

So has the past been edited, or is just a method inadequate to the task?

Not that I want to relive those times; some of the threads got really ugly.

Judy: I remember when you were cyc!

Try it without your handle. Unless someone has written a post with the name in it, it isn't indexed that way (<i>i.e.</i>, the Author: field isn't indexed by Google's web spider - probably because it's not part of the post).

Judy - why don't you try to get your old screen name back and then you could click on it and bring up some of your old posts.

The first time I post on any thread, the last word in my post is

Rex

but it doesn't matter if I omit rex

&quot;fodor's travel guides&quot; meaux site:fodors.com

doesn't do any better.