You can search older posts, just limited to one year at a time. It is a bit of a pain, but if you don't find what you want in 'newer than 1 year' (or know it is older than that), you can search for 'newer than 2 years' and 'older than 1 year', then 'newer than 3 years and 'older than 2 years', etc until you find it.
Ah, I guess I have misunderstood the term "Maximum date range". OK, it works like you described - which is not the easiest way but anyway.
Another thing bothering me is this:
You have the main topic title... and you have the single post title. If you search for something, the results are displayed by the post title - which I think is not really good. For instance, we have very big threads in the German chat section about cinema, TV and hollywood with quite good topic titles. But if you search for certain keywords, you get results in all three threads - and don't know which one is in which one because the post title is displayed.... which is being changed almost with every new post.
While I know this is the "benefit" of a threaded forum, I think it would be very helpful if the main topic title was displayed as well somehow... since most people I guess are using the flat view.
