Forgive me for this off-topic request. But since it impairs my ability to
help people with Excel questions, it might not be entirely inappropriate. I
have not gotten constructive help through the Google Groups forums in the
past for similar problems.

If you can find the following article using Google Groups Advanced Search,
please let me know how you did it field-by-field. Feel free to respond in
email; send to joeu2004 "at" hotmail.com. The article is:

Thread-Topic: conditional format cells by date
From:
Subject: conditional format cells by date
Date: Tue, 4 May 2010 08:27:02 -0700
Message-ID:
Newsgroups: microsoft.public.excel.misc

Please note that my question is specifically about GG Advanced Search. I am
not interested in alternatives; obviously, I did manage to find the article
by other means.

I tried to specify GG article using the message-ID
with and without the
angled brackets ("<..."), then clicking Lookup Message. My result is a
"did not match" error.

I also tried a more pedestrian Advanced Search with the following fields:

1. Sort by date (Also tried Sort by relevance)
2. Language: any (Also tried English)
3. Search Google Groups
4. Message posted between 1 May 2010 and 5 May 2010
(Also tried 4 May 2010. Today is 5 May.)
5. Group: microsoft.public.excel.misc
6. Subject contains: conditional format
(Also tried just: conditional)

I also tried skipping #6 and adding the following instead:

7. Author: simon (Also tried )

In all cases, my search result is a "did not match" error.

Note: I realize that the search might fail due to intermittent computer and
network problems internal to GG. In fact, while writing this posting, I did
experience a period when groups.google.com was non-responding. But I have
been trying over a period of time this morning, all to no avail. And I have
had similar problems in the past.