Find won't find

[Pat Murray]

My partner works in a primary school which has invested in a couple new 
emacs with a Superdrive. Only problem she is experiencing is that the 
Find command won't find anything at all. I seem to remember 
experiencing the same thing on my ibook buy when I coincidentally did 
an Index then the Find started to work.
Has anyone else come across the Find not working??? What did you do to 
fix it???

TIA

Pat :)