What are you trying to search for? Usually specifying the numbers directly should work, as in "nv3" or "ta1".

The tricky thing about searching with tonal pinyin is that if the tones are wrong (i.e. if the proper pronunciation of a character is in the neutral tone rather than its standalone tone) searching using tonal numbers will often miss entries. Spacing can also be problematic.

Please let us know what you're having trouble finding. If there isn't an easy way to search for it or if we aren't doing a good enough job with search, we can figure out how to change our default search algorithms so that the right entries are more findable.