Tutorial Learning how to Find Information on SharePoint Sites
In this Article you will learn to:
✔ Search an entire site
✔ Search a specific list or document library
✔ Search multiple document libraries
One of the most efficient ways to retrieve a list of common items or find a specific item is to ask SharePoint to perform a search. Microsoft provides nearly ubiquitous searching in every SharePoint site. Like the list view filters discussed in Chapter 4, a search can be used to dynamically filter the items in a specific list or document library. However, searching isn’t limited to a single list. A search can also return items from any list or document library in an entire site. From within Office 2003, it can even return documents from document libraries across multiple sites.
Searching in SharePoint is enabled by default, simple to use, and doesn’t require any advance setup.
Note If SharePoint is installed using Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Desktop Engine
(Windows) (WMSDE) rather than Microsoft SQL Server 2000, the Search box will not be displayed.
Content is indexed as it is created. You simply enter one or more keywords into the Search box press Enter, and items relating to those keywords or containing those keywords are returned in a list of search results, sorted by relevance. To search for a phrase instead of the individual words, include the entire phrase in quotation marks. If you type Project 101 without quotation marks, the search returns results associated with the individual words “project” and “101”. But if you include quotes around the phrase “project 101”, the search results returned will be associated with the entire phrase. Search results are even permission aware. This is because permission information is stored in the index along with the content details, so the results of any SharePoint search are permission specific. That is, only the items that you are allowed to view will be returned when you initiate a search. There are some limits. Searching in SharePoint does not support the use of “AND,” wildcards, the ability to search for the lack of a keyword (called negation), or searching for parts of a word. For example, a query for “break” will not return documents that contain only the word “breakfast”. Although searching does include making the search terms plural and placing suffixes like “ed” and “ing” on the ends of keywords (called stemming) and the removal of noise words like “but,” “yet,” and “or;” thesaurus and best bets are not supported. SharePoint Portal Server provides these types of rich search features and a much higher level of search customization across a much larger set of data; the entire enterprise, if you like, including all SharePoint sites and many other content sources can be indexed using SharePoint Portal Server. However, the focus of this document is Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services.
Search can index all text entered into list items and most documents, including all types of Microsoft Office documents. However, indexing files like portable document format (PDF) and AutoCAD require the installation of additional indexing software called IFilters on the SharePoint servers.
If your search does not return any results, you will want to ensure that all keywords are spelled correctly. Otherwise, try different keywords, more general keywords, or synonyms to describe the item you are looking for. If your search returns too many results, increase the number of search words. You can include up to 255 characters in the Search box. You can also use more specific keywords. For example, rather than searching for “tree,” search for the name of a specific kind of tree.
Searching an Entire Site
Searching for information in a SharePoint site works much like searching for information in any of the major Internet search engines. You simply enter one or more keywords into the Search box and press Enter. The search results page will show all the list items and documents that contain one or more of the search terms used. The items that contain the most terms the closest together will be ranked higher than the items that contain fewer terms or terms that are farther apart.
Finding Information on the SharePoint Site
The Search box is located in the upper-right corner of the Home page and all list view pages for all lists and libraries.
To the right of the Search magnifying glass is the Search box where you will type the keywords that best identify the content you are looking for. The green button with the white arrow is the Go button. Clicking on this button will initiate the search.
Tip Pressing Enter while typing in the Search box will also initiate a search.
It may take several minutes for recent items to appear in the search results. By default, Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services will index new content or re-index modified content every five minutes.
In this exercise, you will search for content on an entire SharePoint Web site.
OPEN the SharePoint site where you would like to search for content, for example http://shared.sharepointwebsites.com/ProjectTeam. If prompted, type your user name and password and click OK. If you can authenticate, you have sufficient rights to search.
1 In the Search box in the upper-right corner of the home page of the site, type a keyword, for example you could type Functional Requirements. Then press Enter or click on the green Go button.


The Search Results page should be returned. Search results include a title linked to the item, the list or document library that it was found in, the date the item was last modified, and the author of the item. Search results are also categorized into the List Items and the Documents in which the keyword was found.
Note In the example, the Functional Requirements is listed in both the List Items and Documents results. A document may be listed in both categories because the keyword may have been found in both the document text and in the metadata in the documents list item, as is the case in this example. The title property for the Functional Requirements.doc file has the keyword in it and so does the body of the document.
Note There is no “advanced search” in Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services.
Important Remember, it may take several minutes for recent items to appear in the search results.
2 Browse thru the results of your search and click on the link provided to view the entire content.
3 Optionally, search for another keyword directly from the Search Results page.
Finding Information on the SharePoint Site
Searching a Specific List or Document Library
Searching a specific list or document library is very similar to searching for content in the entire site. First you must navigate to a list view page of the list or document library that you want to search. The search results will be limited to that list or document library. In this way, you can swiftly filter the items shown in any list view of a list or document library.
In the following exercise, you will search for content on a specific list.
OPEN the SharePoint site where you would like to search for content, for example http://shared.sharepointwebsites.com/ProjectTeam. If prompted, type your user name and password and click OK. If you can authenticate, you have sufficient rights to search. As before, to have search results you will need content. So, you can complete the previous exercises listed below to generate some content or you can use one of your own existing sites (search results will vary).

1 In the Quick Launch bar on the left of the Home page, click on a list where you would like to search for content, for example, Issue Tracker Task list.
2 In the Search box in the upper-right corner of the default list view page of the list, type a keyword, for example you could type Dead Link. Then press Enter or click on the green Go button.

Note Any content that satisfies the search criteria will be returned, so if you have other content your search results may include that content. Again the search results page is returned, but this time it looks just like the list view that was showing when the search was initiated and only items from this list that have related keywords are displayed. The columns showing are based upon the columns that would be showing for the list view that is selected.
Tip You can work with the list items on this Search Results page similar to the way that you work with list items on any list view page. Columns can still be sorted by clicking on the column header.
3 Optionally, search for another keyword directly from this Search Results page.
Searching Multiple Document Libraries
What if the documents that you want to search for are not all in one document library or even all in one Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services site? Microsoft Office 2003 provides a means by which to search multiple Windows Explorer Web folders simultaneously. Since Windows SharePoint Services document libraries can be represented as Windows Explorer Web folders, we can use Office to search them too. In the following exercise, you will set up a Web folder to search and then you will search for documents using the File Search option in a Microsoft Office 2003 application, for example Microsoft Word 2003.
OPEN Windows Explorer.
OPEN Microsoft Office Word 2003.
1 In Windows Explorer, in the left pane, click My Network Places. It will be near the bottom. If you already have some Web folders setup they will be listed in the right pane.
2 If you don’t see an option to Add a Network Place, deselect the Folders button on the Windows Explorer toolbar.
3 Click Add a Network Place.
4 On the Welcome page of the Add Network Place wizard, click the Next button. A downloading information from the Internet page will briefly display.
5 On the next page of the Add Network Place wizard, click Choose another network location and click the Next button.
6 On the next page of the Add Network Place wizard, type the Internet address for the document library you want to search, for example http://shared.sharepointwebsites.com/ProjectTeam/Planning Descriptions. Click the Next button.
Tip Navigate to the document library in the browser and copy the entire URL up to, but not including, the word Form from the Address bar of Internet Explorer, and paste it as the Internet address for that document library. If the URL includes %20 for spaces, replace with actual spaces, otherwise, Word might have problems searching.
7 This is an example using my site so of course you may not get access (I’m working on a safe way to do this) but hopefully you will get the idea on how to do this.
8 On the next page of the Add Network Place wizard, type the name you would like to see in Office 2003, for example, Planning. Click the
Next button.
9 On the final page of the Add Network Place wizard, make sure the Open this network place when I click Finish check box is selected and then click the Finish button.
10 A window containing the contents of the selected document library will be displayed.
11 Click the Folders button on the Windows Explorer toolbar.
12 This is now a searchable folder from within Office 2003.
13 Close Windows Explorer.
14 In Microsoft Office Word 2003, click the File menu and then click File Search.
15 This will display the Basic File Search tool pane.
16 In the Search text: box, type the keywords you want search to use, for example you could type Project.
17 Click the Go button.
18 The Search Results tool pane will be displayed and the default Selected locations and Selected file types will be searched.
Tip If you want to stop the search before it completes, click the Stop button.
19 The results of the default search do not look for documents in our SharePoint document library. So, click the Modify button to return to the Basic File Search tool pane.
20 In the Selected locations drop-down list, unselect My Computer, expand My Network Places, and select the Web folder you just created; for example, select Project. Then click the Go button again.
21 The Search Results tool pane will show the status while Office 2003 performs the search and then the results will be displayed.
22 In the Search Results tool pane, move your mouse over a document you want to access and click the down arrow that appears.
23 If you have the necessary permissions, you can click Edit with Microsoft Office Word, make changes, and save them directly back into the document library.
CLOSE Microsoft Word 2003.
Key Points
■ SharePoint search is a powerful way of locating information on your SharePoint sites. ■ Searching in SharePoint is enabled by default. ■ Only results that the searcher has permission to see will be returned in the search results. ■ Search can index list items and all types of Microsoft Office documents. ■ From the browser, you can search an entire site or just a specific list or document library. ■ From Microsoft Office 2003, you can search across SharePoint sites.