Pootle provides a basic searching functionality that allows translators / reviewers to search for some text. The search box is shown next to the language/project path currently viewed.
It is important to realise that when a new search term is entered, searching will take place inside the currently viewed domain. If you are currently at the top level of your project, the whole project will be searched. If you are viewing a directory, only files in that directory will be searched. If you are already viewing/translating a file, only that file will be searched.
The first result will be shown in context in the file where it is found. When you click “Skip”, “Suggest” or “Translate” it will provide the next match to the search (in the original domain) until all matches were presented. Remember that if you edit the search query while viewing search results in a specific file, your new query will only search in that specific file.
Since Pootle 1.2 the search function has been improved a little bit. Next to the search textbox, there's an arrow icon that when clicked will toggle some options for the search to be done.
At this stage, the only advanced search option is searching for fields. It is possible to select to search for text in source and target texts as well as in comments and locations. Any combination of these options is accepted.
As a default, it will search for source and target strings. If a non-default search is performed, the search widget will slightly change its background color.
The basic searching uses pogrep which will look for the substring in the source and target text. It supports Unicode normalisation. Alternatively, a Pootle server might be installed with and indexing engine (PyLucene or Xapian) to speed up searching. Search results can differ slightly from the normal search, based on the indexing that engine uses.
Some basic query in Lucene syntax is also possible. More information on Lucene queries.