I’m searching for a particular set of posts in a very long thread. Before the change, I was able to search for a specific page, which would put me in the neighborhood, or I could refine my search further. Now it appears we only have the forward and backward buttons, and I can only go back 2 or 3 pages at a time. Rather tedious when I know that what I’m looking for is 50 or 100 pages back.
Is there some way to pull up a specific page?
Just trying to understand how you have traditionally searched for a specific page. Do you recall certain content from the specific page within the thread that you try searching for? Do you try using the numbered navigation links that can take you directly to a page? You mention only going back 2 or 3 pages at a time, though the page links let you look at several pages ahead or back simply by clicking on them.
Have you tried using the advanced search on this site? There is a down arrow to the right of the search text box that brings up more specific search criteria.
Hi Lenitus. 
Sorry for the delay; it’s been a nutty week.
Here’s what I used to do. Say the thread was started a year ago, and is now 200 pages. I’m looking for a particular conversation I dimly remember happening last winter. So in the past, there was a little “Go To” tool, and I could jump directly to page 100. If that wasn’t far enough, I could then jump directly to page 80, and so on. Once I was in the neighborhood, I would fine tune using the forward and backward arrows, or the numbered page links. I used to be able to find past conversations fairly quickly this way.
Now, if I’m on page 200 and I want to get to page 100, I have to use the numbered page links, but on any given page, they only go back 3 or 4 pages. So from my page 200, I’d have to click 196. Once that loads, I’d have to click 192, then 188, and so on. That’s what I meant by tedious.
Advanced search wouldn’t work in the case I’m thinking of, since there weren’t any words or terms I remember which would have been unique in the context of the thread. I tried searching by date, “within one month of 1/1/14” – asking for December and January posts – which produced 65 pages of results in the Parent Café. I could cull through those and look for posts in the specific thread, but that’s maybe even more tedious than clicking back through the thread 3 pages at a time. And if what I’m looking for wasn’t in one of two those months, I’d need to search again using a different date.
Does that make sense?
Sorry as well for the delay on this end. I don’t always make it on here over the weekends.
Okay, now I see that you are lacking some options when it comes to the page links that make it more difficult to step through a lot of pages. I do see on the following discussion that there are links for the first seven pages, and then a link to page 89, which is the last page of results (<a href=“Schools known for good merit aid - Parents Forum - College Confidential Forums”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/52133-schools-known-for-good-merit-aid-p1.html</a>). However, if you wanted to land somewhere in the middle you’d need to click through a bunch of pages. We either need a “jump to” option or at least include a few more stopping points in the middle. Would that make it easier? So, for the thread with 89 pages of results, we might have the next several pages linked, but then include one at 50, and one at 75, or thereabouts. Not sure of the development resources needed for such changes (or the timeframe), but we can at least ask about them and get them on the radar. Thanks for the input!
Yes, a Jump To would be great, but I think intermediate links every 25 pages would do the job almost as well.
Thanks!
We’ll see what we can get on the roadmap. No idea of potential timeframe, but I have alerted our product manager.
No worries. Thanks for looking at it.