Can't find my old Posts on Apple Support Community

There are several ways of finding old Community posts if you do not have a link directly to the post:

1) MY SUBSCRIPTIONS

On a community page click on your or another user's avatar image so it directs you to a profile page. Then click on the My Subscriptions tab to view a list of threads that user is following. (A “thread” is a topic title with a question and all the posts that are responding to that question.) What you see in My Subscriptions is thread participation, not individual posts. You may not even see your name as part of this list if you were not the most recent person to reply or were not the originator of the thread. To track down your posts you will have to open a thread and then scroll through it .

For recent posts this is the most effective way, particularly if you are viewing your own profile. However, even though the Community site stores posts spanning decades, the My Subscriptions display ends at about 3 months. In addition, if that user “follows” other users or forums, you will see a list of all threads being followed, not just ones relevant to your search.

2) GENERAL WEB SEARCH

In a general web search engine (DuckDuckGo, Bing, Google, etc.), enter your Community username in the search bar followed by a space and then the term: site:discussions.apple.com

E.g. Limnos site:discussions.apple.com

This will go back farther in time but still may not find all posts made by you because these are only sporadic snapshots. You can, however, do a lot more customization of the search such as refine date intervals. If you remember something about the post you made you can include those criteria (put quotes around them) along with your username so the engine only searches for those items on the discussions.apple.com web site. For example:

Limnos site:discussions.apple.com “My subscriptions”

If you do not find the post using one search engine, try another in case they scanned Apple’s site at different times.

Most search sites have additional chronological filtering allowing you to narrow down to a specific time interval.

There are parts of the Community with restricted access such as the Lounge. The general search engines cannot see these areas.

This older user tip provides some additional information about doing a web search. —> Find Older Posts: [username] site:discussions.apple.com = Find Older Posts: [username] site:discuss… - Apple Community

3) COMMUNITY SEARCH

This method will only find a post if somebody replied to you and used your name.

On a community web page click on the word “Search” (not the magnifying glass) in the Community menu bar.

In the new page enter the search term such as your community user name. If you remember any subject keywords you can enter those too to narrow down the search.

When the results appear, click on “Filter” at the left and then a category to do additional filtering such as looking for a post made in the past month with your name in the iPhone community.

There is no chronological ordering of the posts other than the time window filtering options. If you have been busy on the Community for a long time, be prepared to see many results! In general the oldest ones tend to appear later in the results but the results are by no means chronological.

With this method I have only found posts going back as far as 2006. A general web search has found posts back to 2002.

Your posts are only saved on your User Profile for about 45 days if you want to go back and review them. I don't know the exact time frame as it is not documented, but when viewing mine it goes back 45 days for any previous post.

Just copy/paste this into a browser and you will find your results.

site://discussions.apple.com j9lemmon

It is just done by using the site: prefix to this site, followed by a space and then your user name. When I do that on your username it is a brief 2 page response with every post you have responded to.

You can also use the Search link on the top of the page here and enter a generic search term such as "iPhone" that may have been included in your initial post. In the Side Bar, choose Author and select your username there. When I do that 10 of your previous posts pop up and you can choose one from there.

Thanks Mac Jim ID, Allan Jones and Niel.

I like using

site://discussions.apple.com j9lemmon

best because it appears to display ALL the posts I started, the results are displayed by Title, and when I choose an entry, it shows the entire post.

But this method is great if I want to look at posts I've started on a particular topic:

"You can also use the Search link on the top of the page here and enter a generic search term such as "iPhone" that may have been included in your initial post. In the Side Bar, choose Author and select your username there. When I do that 10 of your previous posts pop up and you can choose one from there. "

Interestingly, when I use that method to search the topic "can't find my posts on Apple community" I see that I posted about the same issue two years ago, and I got this excellent response from Urquhart1244 that explains the very likely (and valid) reason that Apple allows you to see only recent posts you started by looking at My Subscriptions:

I believe it to be caused by the fact of millions of registered users here with a relatively small group of regulars. Such search functions are difficult to scale efficiently and cost effectively. It gets a bit easier when they set a few limits.

Posts stay here in perpetuity, but the forum's internal search indexing only "sees" back about 2-3 months. I can find old posts I made using the site-delimited search engine method going back to before some of our mods were in school 👶🏻

Apple have not shared with us the reason for the internal search limit, and the Terms of Use we all agreed to follow does tn permit speculation., making a a bit of a moot point.

A post removed for cause is long-gone. Casues are in Section B of the Apple Support Community Terms of Use.

Additional information:

1) If the moderators removed your post because of violation of Terms Of Use, it won't appear in your post history. The same applies if you replied to a post or a thread question that was itself removed.

2) If your name has changed on the forums then any threads in which you participated should still appear under the new name in My Subscriptions, However, if you do a general web search you will have to search for the old name for posts made when using that old name. In fact, if the hosts gave you an intermediate name and you posted under that then you may need to search for that too.

If they've disappeared from My Subscriptions, the only option is to use an external search engine.

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Also available as a User Tip here --> Finding Old Posts - Your Post History - Apple Community