When Me thief come across a locked and trapped chest he presses his thief skill butt and a gold lock cursor come over the said chest. My thief unlock the said chest and then he press said thief skill butt again but all he get is a dull grey squirgly sign over said chest. Me thief then open said chest and he die.Me thief have disable device skill, search and others. He dont have pick pocket skill; is this the problem? Game has patch. Oh yeah, what search do and how my thief use it?

Search finds traps. :) So you should try to find the traps (wait at least 6 seconds or 1 round) before you try to open anything.
Use the icon with the magnifying glass on it to start searching.

search skill needs to be used ... i recommend to maximize search and disarm skills as i found some traps not to be disabled when i encountered them ... and i did all quests so had max possible xp but missed to maximize disarm ... later, traps hold highlvl spells and most are devastating or even deadly.

Even a rogue with maxed-out disarm skill (for his/her level) will still experience a ridiculously high failure rate for disarming traps, with often deadly results.

Always use search before trying to open chests, and the like. I always max out my disable device/lockpicking abilities, although I need to improve my search because I don't always find the non-container traps. Then again, if your rogue has a high enough dex, then he/she can evade the spells quite often. Well, my rogue evades magic most of the time.