referencing discussions in this forum

[Guest]

Sorry, this is not even an excel question but I've been wondering about it a
while.

I find this forum very useful and I want to be able to make references to
specific threads/discussions/questions/responses in this forum in my comments
in my code. So far I've been copying & pasting the entire url which,
incidentally, I don't fully comprehend nor am sure works definitively. Not to
mention the url is very, very long.

My question: Is each specific posting or each discussion/thread tagged or
otherwise assigned some kind of serial number so that one can use it easily
to retrieve a specific response/solution at a future date?

Thanks a lot.

 

[joeu2004]

My question: Is each specific posting or each discussion/thread tagged or
otherwise assigned some kind of serial number so that one can use it easily
to retrieve a specific response/solution at a future date?

Good question! I think the simplest answer is "probably not" :-(.
The more complete and more correct answer depends on your news server
and the capabilities presented to you by your news reader.

If you can look at the unformatted form of a posting (which is ASCII
text), you will find a Message-ID header record. That record ID is
unique to the news server on which the posting originated. It is
globally unique because the server name is included in the ID.

However, whether or not you can do a seach for the Message-ID is
another matter altogether. Google Groups Advanced Search claims to
provide that capability. But I have not been able to make it work.
Moreover, it would only work if the posting is on the Google Groups
news server(s). I have found that many postings to Microsoft
Discussion Groups never make it to GG servers :-(, inexplicably.

 

[Dave Peterson]

I'm not sure what URL you're using, but maybe you want to use google groups to
search for the thread you like.

Then you can shorten that URL on
http://snipurl.com
http://tinyurl.com
(or one of the equivalent sites).

I've bookmarked this:
http://groups.google.com/advanced_group_search?q=group:*Excel*&num=100
to get me to a search screen quickly.

 

[Gord Dibben]

I would suggest downloading Ron de Bruin's google search add-in which makes it
very easy to find topics by search words.

http://www.rondebruin.nl/Google.htm