Cant find special characters in Search

[Sonic625]

We are experiencing some issues with the Search function, when we try to keyword search for a username or word with a special character (ie, # - _ $ etc) it does not fin any posts.
This is after a re-index of the search as well.

[Jake Bunce]

Those characters might be encoded in the post text in the database. For example, HTML special characters are converted:

< = &lt;
> = &gt;
etc...

Or try using fulltext:

Admin CP -> vBulletin Options -> Search Type (on the left, not the right)

Then run a repair to ensure that the search index is up-to-date:

Admin CP -> Maintenance -> Repair / Optimize Tables

With fulltext you can search for strings and phrases by using double quotes.