You may have noticed that many lists and libraries have a "find a file" search box next to the list of available views. You may also have noticed that there is a search box at the upper right corner of your site as well. These offer different search experiences and one may work better for you than the other depending on what you are doing. In this post, we'll explore the differences.
Find a file
Here are some important things to note about how this search box within your list or library works:
- Scoped to the list or library – meaning it is only searching the content within that list
- Does not use the ranking model – this means the results returned to you are all treated equally and the order of the results is the same as the view you are using in that list or library. So, if you are looking at a list that is grouped by a category and sorted by the oldest item to newest, your search results will be returned that way too. Depending on what you are looking for, this could be a drawback as the results that best match your search may not be at the top of your result set.
If you want to remove or add this "Find a file" search box from your list or library, click here: How-To: Add or Remove the "Find a file" search box
Search This Site
- Scoped to the entire site – By default, this search box looks at all content on the site with options in the dropdown menu to select Everything, People, and Conversations.
- Uses the ranking model - The items that are most relevant (strongest matches to your search terms) will be displayed at the top of the results page.
- Customizable – This, in my opinion, is a key feature that can make this a very powerful tool. There are several things we can modify which will be outlined in a separate post: Make your site's search rock!
Thanks for reading.
Actually, you can customise the searches - and that includes the "find an item" / "find a file" boxes, as well as the default search results page - by creating a custom "Content Source" and setting that as the Default source in Search Settings (in Tenant Administration on Office 365, or Central Admin on a private server).
ReplyDeleteThe Source will then allow adding custom query filters, changing the sorting and ranking etc.
The settings will be "global", however you can then create other search experiences by using the Search Web Parts or a Search Center, as Brian points out.
Regards,
Pauli
Do you know of any restrictions around special characters, LVT, or property name searches (i.e. "filename:this_is_a_filename") in the Find a file search?
ReplyDelete