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I would like to search just within groups which have "movies" in the title. Can you please explain how to create a custom list of such groups? At the moment I see a search field dropdown headed "All Groups" which has "Automobiles", "Motorcycles", "Music", etc in the list. It also contains "Custom_Lists" but I can't see how one creates such a list! Thanks.

1 - Make a new topic using "New Folder" in the groups right click message.

2 - Add all the groups you want to add using the groups dialog from the options.

3 - Move these groups into your new folder.

4 - In the watch list, settings, pick this new topic as the "search in" groups.

That'll limit the search to those groups. I'd only add the big groups. If the group doesn't contain at lease 100 million headers, I wouldn't add it. Keep in mind that many things are posted too oddball groups that don't have "Movie" in the group name.

Many thanks for quick and very helpful reply. I've successfully executed steps 1-3 and that has given me what I want (a new option in the All Groups dropdown). Not sure I follow what's happening in step 4, though. I thought Watch Lists were to alert you to new posts that matched specified criteria?

would like to search just within groups which have "movies" in the title

I assumed you meant "watch lists" and not "custom list". Custom lists are something you feed by hand. Say you load a group or you use search, you can send some of the results to a custom list.

If you really mean "custom list" there's no much point to doing what I suggested.

So, maybe I don't understand what you're trying to do. If you want the search engine to just return results from your newly created list of groups, you just need to select this topic before you search.

OK. I am wanting to search within just a selection of groups. How do i select a topic before I search?

Click the "Search in Groups" dropdown on the Search tab. By default it is "All Groups". When you click on the dropdown box, it'll list all the group folders that are configured in the Groups tab. Once a group folder is selected, only the groups in that folder will be searched.