OK, apparently, a LOT of people are having problems with the search feature in DK4. Some of this seems to be based on whether you use IE, or Firefox, or whatever. I use Firefox, and I haven't had any problem, so here's a guide.
1. Click on the GO button next to the white box with "search" in it.
2. Decide whether you want to search diaries, comments, users, groups or tags. For now, let's choose diaries. Click on that in the list near the top of the screen.
3. Choose "all diaries" or one of the other choices in the white box next to "search". I have always used "all diaries"
4. Decide whether you to search for title or text and title. The former will search for words that are in the title of diaries. This is good if you have some common search term, and want diaries devoted just to that. The latter finds words anywhere in the diary. This can bring up a LOT of diaries, but if you don't know if the word is in the title, go for this.
5. Enter the stuff you want to search for in the long white box where it says (text). E.g. "senate".
6. If you know the author you want to search for, enter it in the white box next to BY AUTHOR(S) where it says (authors). If not, skip this. I'll enter plf515
7. If you know the tag you want, enter it in the box next to BY TAGS(S) where it says (tags). If not, skip this. I'll skip.
8. Enter dates. If you do not enter a start date, it will only give you diaries for today. If you click on the white box, it will bring up a calendar, or you can enter a date in MM/DD/YYYY format. I'll enter 01/01/2011 for start and leave (now) for finish
9. Click search
10. Scroll down. If you did what I just did, you should see three diaries that I wrote between Jan 1 and now. It should look like this.
I haven't tried all the possible combinations, but what I have tried has worked fine.
Updated by plf515 at Mon Mar 21, 2011 at 06:05 PM EDT
Oops, here's a bug!
If you copy the info from the URL, it just goes to the general search page, not the specific search you had created. So, my links in the diary and comments do not work.