SharePoint has a built-in search facility that
enables you to find content in SharePoint (and sometimes also content
that is not in SharePoint, depending on the configuration the search
administrator set up). The search user interface can be customized, so
the search screen in your SharePoint site may look different from
what’s shown in this chapter. Such customization doesn’t change how you
search, however.
It is important to note that
searching in SPF is different from searching in SharePoint Server,
which itself can have different options if FAST technology is
installed. Indeed, one of the main reasons corporations buy and install
SharePoint Server and the FAST search technology is that the search
options that come with these two products offer much more for the
administrator and for you, the end user, to use.
The basic search in
both SharePoint Server and SPF is the same: You type the search
keywords in the search box and click Go. However, SharePoint Server has
an additional Advanced option that allows you to search for items using
their properties, and a Preferences option that allows 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 allows 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 may have other options for
how to search, including the Advanced link (for advanced searching), a
Preferences link (for setting preferences, as mentioned earlier), and
dedicated search pages. These options are covered later in this chapter.
The simplest form of searching in SharePoint—the method just described—is known as a search.
The keyword can be a word that appears in the document (part of the
document’s contents) or in the document or list items 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.
Tip
Because search results
can sometimes be documents and 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, right-click the link and choose Open in New Window.
Or 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, surround it with quotation marks (for
example, “mountain bikes”). Alternatively, you can use the advanced
search (described later in this chapter) 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.
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 with the title Sort
By and in it the option Modified Date. Select this option to reorder
the search results.
In addition, the search
results page in a SharePoint Server configuration offers two ways to be
notified when a new search result for your search is added in the
future: the Alert Me and RSS options. 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 these options.
The Alert Me option is similar to the alert functionality for other objects in SharePoint but has fewer options, as shown in Figure 2.
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, 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.
