My friends and I have had a server since ~2016 that we use and I've been able to find whatever I've needed even back that far. It might be harder in a higher volume server (we have about 20 actives and another 20 semi-active chatters).

But the search will let you specify time periods, channels, who sent the message, etc. It also gives a line of context around the result, which takes up some space, but I find is quite useful for, well, getting the context of the statement and figuring out what it meant.

I think the most important facet for (very) old content searching, though, is that you can almost immediately go back in the chat history to any result. Whereas other chat apps make that slow or difficult.

https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/115000468588