Best guide ever.
Infinetly better than the built in "help." This needs a sticky.
WTG Z 
Thanks man, should help a lot of folks.
Upon further review.............this is still the best thread evar.
Very handy and well put together! Thanks for the help, I was lost but now am found...
The search is still lacking the one feature that would make it most useful to me - search threads instead of individual messages. If I'm looking for something in the subject, there's no reason to display all the replies to the orignial message just because they have the same subject.
Darn nice post, though.
Rats, now I'm hungry
So you mean I can actually search for information on powers without posting "Check out my Build" everytime I use the Hero Planner? Wow!
And dang, no posts on how to do that Peanut Butter and Jelly Dance....bummer. Anyone have a link to some streaming video on that one?
Thanks for the guide. I was confused on a few of those things.
You may want to add that the search function only works on words that are four or more characters long. Smaller words are ignored, even in quoted strings.
Thus a search for 'ice' returns nothing, a search for 'wet' and 'ice' returns nothing. And a search for ' "wet ice" ' returns nothing. There is no way to search for posts about the tanker power Wet Ice, nor any other power with words of three characters or less. This confuses many people into thinking that the search function is broken. It's not broken, just a little insensitive.
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That was more help than you could possibly imagine. Thanks.
My problem with the search engine is that it doesn't support showing results by thread. This typically means that if you want to figure out how to slot your Stamina, or see the numbers for Stamina, and you search for something like "Stamina," you will get over ONE THOUSAND results to sort through when only about 50 of them are actually threads.
The old Cryptic search engine (pre-launch/beta client) supported the ever-so-simple solution of searching with -Re:
Using that, you would get (almost) exclusively results by thread, rather than by post.
For some reason, this search engine does not support that. Even using "-Re:[space]" doesn't work, presumably because it is still counted as only 3 characters and it ignores the space.
This version needs one of the following:
1) 3 character search
2) Search field allows -Re:
3) Check box for "show results as threads"
The problem I had was trying to search for this post. 
I do wish someone would consider letting us search for 3 letter words...
"How do I find things out for myself?"
HA, very nice
wow......sooooo awesome! very well done
'nuff said
One tip that's very useful for actually finding *threads,* instead of 100 replies to one -
In the search terms box, type in your query (we'll say someone's looking for 'mastermind controls') like this:
+"Mastermind controls" -"re: "
(Yes, leave the space after the colon.)
This will exclude every reply header (all of which start with re: ) and let you see individual threads.
The new and improved Search Feature in the UBB.Threads 6.4 forum software used for the City of Heroes forums is very powerful, however if you're not familiar with how to use it properly, it may not yield the results you are looking for.
To Perform a Search:
<ul type="square"> [*] Go to the Search Page
[*] Select the Category, Forum or Forums that you would like to search from the left.
- Selecting a Category will search all forums in that category.
- Selecting one forum will search in just that forum
- Selecting multiple forums will search only withing those selected forums
[*] On the right, to search a keyword enter it into the box. You can click "Advanced Search Tips" for more help.
- Entering a single keyword will search for that word.
- Entering 2 or more words will search for each word, as if there were an OR operator. So entering peanut butter will search for posts containing peanut OR butter
- Entering 2 or more words WITH PLUS SIGNS will search with an AND operator. So entering +peanut +butter will search for posts that contain peanut AND butter but they do NOT have to be together.
- Entering 2 or more words IN QUOTE MARKS will search for the phrase. So entering "peanut butter" will search for posts that contain the PHRASE peanut butter and will not return the post if it contains only one of the words.
- Entering 2 or more words with A MINUS sign will exclude words from the search. So entering +peanut -butter will search for posts which have the word peanut in them and DO NOT have the word butter.
- You can mix and match search operators. For example, entering "peanut butter" -jelly would return posts containing the PHRASE peanut butter and NOT containing the word jelly.
- Entering "peanut butter" +jelly -dance would return posts containing the PHRASE peanut butter and containing the word jelly but NOT containing the word dance.
[*] Below that, you can choose whether you are searching the subject AND body of the posts, or just the subject.
[*] Under the Username search section, you can enter a username here. This can be done with or without keywords. So entering "peanut butter" +jelly + dance in the keywords and the username of navaho would return posts containing the PHRASE peanut butter AND the word jelly AND the word dance posted by the user navaho.
[*] Next select a date range. There's an option to search all posts, or search for posts newer or older than a certain criteria. Narrowing down the search time will increase the speed of the results.
[*] Next you can choose how many results per page you wish to view.
[*] As well as choose to view a profile of the body. If selected this will show you the first few words in the body of each post.
[*] When you are finished, click "Submit". [/list]