Scenario/Problem:
You want to find a piece of content that exists in your corporate
network, but you’re not sure where in the network it is. It might be a
document stored in SharePoint or in a file share, or a list item in
SharePoint or in an application database.
Solution:
SharePoint has a built-in search facility that allows you to find
content in SharePoint (and, sometimes, also content that is not in
SharePoint, depending on the configuration the search administrator set
up).
Note that searching in SPF is different from
searching in SharePoint Server. Indeed, one of the main reasons
corporations buy and install SharePoint Server is that the search
options that come with this product offer much more for the
administrator and for you, the end user, to use.
Searching for a File or List Item Within a Specific List or Library
When you’re in a document library or a list,
a simple search box on the top of the list view (next to the view
names) enables you to search for a file or an item in that list or
library. This filters the list view to show only the items that contain
the term you searched for.
Searching for a File or List Item in the Entire SharePoint Environment
The basic search in both SharePoint Server
and SPF is the same: You type the search keywords in the search box and
click the search icon. However, SharePoint Server has an additional
Advanced option that enables you to search for items using their
properties, and a Preferences option that enables you to set the
languages you are using to search, the default language, and whether
you want to see search suggestions in the search box. SharePoint Server
also enables you to search all the SharePoint sites (unlike SPF, which
allows you to search only the site you are currently in) as well as
content that exists outside SharePoint.
To search for anything,
you usually just type in the search box a keyword that represents the
item you want to search for and click the search button, which usually
looks like a magnifying glass. The location of the search box can vary,
and if you are using SharePoint Server, you might have other options
about how to search, including the Advanced link (for advanced
searching), a Preferences link (for setting preferences, as mentioned
earlier), and dedicated search pages.
The simplest form of searching in SharePoint—the method just described—is known as a keyword search.
The keyword can be a word that appears in the document (part of the
document’s contents) or in the document or list item’s properties (for
example, a document name, a contact’s company name, or anything else
the search administrator decided should be included in the search
scope). Figure 1 shows an example of a keyword search.
FIGURE 1 Searching for the word adventureworks
produces results that include documents that have the word in its
contents, a list view, and a site whose home page has the same word.
Tip
Because search results can sometimes be
documents, sometimes list items, and sometimes web pages or list views,
what you get when you click on a search result will vary.
When opening search results, you might want
to open the result in a new window (or a new tab, in some browsers) so
you don’t lose the search results page you are viewing. To do so, you
right-click the link and choose Open in New Window. You also can
Shift+click the link to open it in a new window; Ctrl+click opens it in
a new tab in some browsers.
You can search for more than one word. The search results contain everything that includes any of those words.
Tip
Searching for the words mountain bikes results in all the documents that have either the word mountain or the word bikes as well as mountains and bike
and other forms of the two words. If you want to search only for an
exact match for a phrase, you surround it with quotation marks (for
example, “mountain bikes”). Alternatively, you can use the advanced
search to accomplish the same effect.
By default the search results are sorted by
relevance; the document you are most likely looking for should be the
first in the list. SharePoint calculates the relevance of the documents
based on many things, but basically, a document with more instances of
the word you searched for should be highest in a list sorted by
relevance.
In some instances, SharePoint recognizes that
the search you conducted can be filtered on some common property such
as the result type (Word documents, web pages, site names, and so on)
or the author of the content. These filters, also known as refiners
(because they refine your search) appear on the left side of the
screen, and you can simply click the value you want to filter the
results to. For example, to filter the results to content authored by
John, click on John’s name under the Author refiner as shown earlier in
Figure 1. Some refiners have the Show More option, which enables you to manually specify a value instead of selecting one from the list.
Some refiners are more sophisticated than a
simple value list. For example, the Modified Date refiner shows a graph
of values—the more items were modified on a specific date, the higher
the graph bar is. You can then click on the bar to filter the results
to that date range. Additionally, a sliding bar at the bottom of the
graph lets you drag two lines to specify a start and end range for the
date.
Tip
Depending on the configuration of the search
page, you might have an option to choose a different sorting order—to
sort by modified date. If the page was configured to have this option,
you see a drop-down menu with the title Sort By and in it the option
Modified Date. You can select this option to reorder the search results.
In addition, the search results page in a
SharePoint Server configuration offers a way to be notified when a new
search result for your search is added in the future by clicking the
Alert Me link. For example, if you search for AdventureWorks and you want to know when new documents or list items are created in the future, you can use this option.
The Alert Me option is similar to the alert functionality for other objects in SharePoint but has fewer options, as shown in Figure 2.
FIGURE 2 The search alert settings page.
In the Change Type section, select whether
you want to be alerted only on new items, on changed items, or on both.
In the When to Send Alerts section, you select whether you want daily
alerts or immediate alerts when there is something to be alerted on.
Note
Alerts from searches are never
immediate. An e-mail is sent to you only when the change has been
picked up by the search engine. Depending on the search configuration
that the administrator set up, that can take a while.
