> ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.tied.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Finding a conversation > One query, four kinds of result — and two limits worth knowing before you conclude something isn't there. Search runs one query against four different things at once and groups what comes back. One search query runs against messages, conversations, contacts and help centre articles at once. One search query runs against messages, conversations, contacts and help centre articles at once. ## What each one matches Matches the **content** of messages. This is the slowest and most restricted of the four, and the one people misjudge most often — see the three-month limit below. Matches the conversation's own display number, and the contact's name, email address, phone number or external identifier. It does **not** look inside the messages — that is what the messages results are for. Matches name, email, phone number or identifier, across the whole account — but only among contacts that have a non-empty email, phone number or identifier. A name-only contact, such as an unidentified web visitor, never appears here, no matter how you type the name. Matches [help centre](/help-center) articles with no status scope — a draft or an archived article is just as searchable here as a published one. Worth remembering as a reason to be careful what you leave sitting in draft: it's findable long before it's meant to be customer-facing. ## The two limits **Message search only covers the last three months.** A conversation from last year is still findable by contact name, email or conversation number — but not by anything that was said in it. If you are searching for a phrase and getting nothing, this is almost always why. **You see results from the inboxes you have access to.** Conversation and message results are scoped to your own inboxes; administrators see every inbox in the account. Contacts and articles are account-wide for everyone. Each group returns fifteen results at a time. ## Getting a better result * **Search by phone number or email rather than name.** Names are entered inconsistently by customers and imported inconsistently by systems; a phone number is a phone number. * **If you know roughly when, use a [view](/inbox/views) instead.** Filters beat search for "everything from this inbox, last week, still open" — search is for when you know *what*, not *when*. * **Quote the exact phrase you remember.** Message search matches the content you type; a half-remembered paraphrase will not find it. ## Next Filters and saved views — better than search for anything time-shaped. Participants, mentions, private notes and snooze. The thing that makes conversations findable a year later. Searching people rather than threads. This documentation is built and hosted on [Mintlify](https://mintlify.com), a developer documentation platform.