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I'm on some (single) SX site, call it foo.stackexchange.com . There used to be a user named JoeUser, with number 1234. That user has left, deleting their account.
Their questions and answers don't disappear, but I do not seem to be able to search for them: https://foo.stackexchange.com/search?q=user%3A1234 doesn't work.
Can I effect this search somehow?
You can do it in the Stack Exchange Data Explorer with the following query:
SELECT Id AS [Post Link], OwnerDisplayName
FROM Posts
WHERE OwnerDisplayName = 'user#####';
Note that you must know their user ID number and put that where the hashes are, so in your example, you'd have WHERE OwnerDisplayName = 'user1234'.
This will return a link to the post by the title of the question and the current display name.
This works because the display name of a deleted user reverts to the default "user[usernumber]" format when the account is deleted.
NOTE: If the user account was deleted recently, their username may still be in SEDE, as it takes up to a week to update (updates Sunday evenings).
