Searching for content in SharePoint is a lot easier and more powerful if you know a few simple rules. Much like searching in Google, you can refine the results with the search term if you know how.

 

First of all, it's worth understanding a bit about what is searchable: filenames and metadata (tags or properties) are all indexed and are searchable, but so is the actual content of a document. This is one reason why tagging image and video files is so important as they will contain no text.

 

With all that data being indexed, it becomes clear that optimising the search term will help you find that document or image as quickly as possible. Here are some key pointers:

 

1. Double-quotes

Searching for Rhubarb Crumble and Custard will return all results containing any of those 4 words. Put them in quotes to find files with these specific word in this order:  "Rhubarb Crumble and Custard"

 

 

2. Operators or Commands

Rhubarb OR Crumble will return all files containing the word rhubarb along with all the files containing custard 
Use Rhubarb AND Custard to show only files containing both terms

Use Rhubarb NOT Custard to find rhubarb only

 

NOTE: Operators AND, OR and NOT must always be CAPITALISED

 

 

3. Wildcards (*)

Using the asterisk in the search helps if you are unsure the of a spelling or how a word has been spelled. For example, rhub* will return all documents containing words beginning "rhub"

 

 

4. Where the Search starts

If you have an idea of the site or library you think your content can be found in, start there. In modern sites, when you search in a library, it prompts to allow you to widen the search site-wide. The results from a site-wide and library wide search differ slightly. The best thing to do is give it a try to get used to how your search query returns results.