[EricH]

You've all seen this happen: you just get an answer to one problem and are looking at some other ones, when lo and behold, someone else posts a brand-new thread asking the same thing. Sometimes, there are half a dozen active threads discussing the same topic! Usually, at least one of them has a link to the rest and a request to search first.

Why not just answer each question individually when it comes up? We kind of don't like repeat topics. We'd also prefer if you searched around a bit to try to find the answer. It's not that we don't want to help you, it's that we already did, and we kind of don't like repeating ourselves if we don't have to. Not only that, it's faster to find another thread on the topic than it is to start a thread, have someone who knows the answer find the thread, read it and get the info, post a response, and then have you read it. (Not to mention that you may get 3 responses doing the same thing.)

How do you do a search? Up in the orange bar at the top of the page, there is an item labeled “search”. Click this and enter your search terms in the dropdown box that appears. If you get a lot of results, you may want to do an advanced search; just click where it says “Advanced Search” on the bottom of that dropdown and fill in the various terms.

Now, there is a related issue that will get you if you aren’t careful: thread revival. In the course of a search, you may come upon threads that are several years old and still open. Responding to those may get you the “Holy ancient thread revival!” response. My personal rule of thumb is that anything under about a year is fair game; over that, you should probably link to the old thread (to show that yes, you did search) and start a new one.