From: elkabban@regent.usask.ca (Ossama Elkabbani)
Subject: Re: How to retrieve previous news?
Organization: University of Saskatchewan
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1992 08:44:55 GMT

In article <T74BsB2w165w@student.business.uwo.ca> w4sin@student.business.uwo.ca (Wai Yi Sin) writes:
>I am a new user of SCHK.  I got a problem in retrieving the messages that 
>I have previously read.  Can anybody help me?

This article can help you:
Also, just because you've already read an article doesn't mean
it has vanished off the face of the earth.  It is a fairly simple matter
to get back to articles you've already read (unless your site
administrator
has removed them or they've expired).  There are essentially four
methods
to accomplish this (examples assume you're using rn):
        1.  Assuming you know the article number(s) of the postings,
just
            enter the article number from within that newsgroup.  Voila!
       2.  Since you probably DON'T know the article number, once you
are
            in the appropriate newsgroup, you can step backwards or
forwards
            through the articles by using "P" (previous) and "N" (next).
       3.  So you don't know the article number, and you don't want to
step
            backwards through 50+ articles - what now?  As long as you
            remember something from the subject line of the article, you
can
            use regular expressions to search backwards, using the
command
            "?pattern?r", where pattern is the part you remember.  For
            example, you read an article with the word "howdy" in the
subject,
            then decide later you want to get back to that article.
Just get
            into the right newsgroup, then enter "?howdy?r" and rn will
search
            back through all the articles you've read to find the last
one
            with "howdy" somewhere in the title.  Not the right one?
Enter
            "?", and rn will retrieve the next-to-last article with
"howdy"
            in the title.
        4.  You can modify your .newsrc file so that articles are no
longer
            marked as being read (this file usually resides in your home
           directory).  This is especially valuable if you forgot the
name
            of a particular posting, but you know it was in the last ?x?
           number articles.  For example, if your .newsrc file reads:
                alt.binaries.pictures.misc: 1-2380
            ...and you know that the article you're looking for was in
the
            last 30 or so postings, you could edit this line to read:
                alt.binaries.pictures.misc: 1-2350
            ...so that your news reader would think that you hadn't yet
seen
            these articles (of course you'll have to re-sort through
many
            other articles you've already seen, but hopefully you'll at
least
            be able to find the "lost" article!).  IMPORTANT NOTE!!:  If
you
            edit your .newsrc file, make *absolutely sure* that you
aren't
            currently running a news reader session - this may munge the
           .newsrc file, or cause other undefined or undesirable
side-effects.

By using these techniques, you won't have to ask for someone to e-mail
you a
copy or to re-post the article, since you already have it and know how
to
get back to it!