This is a presentation I gave to our internal SharePoint User Group on Friday, September 19th, 2014. It covered some of the basics of SharePoint searching, taking them beyond the "type in a couple of words and hope for the best" approach.

1. SEARCHING IN
SHAREPOINT
Thomas Duff
09/19/2014

2. Agenda
• Making Sure Your Site Is Searchable
• Search Keywords
• Property Keywords
• Refiners
• Best Bets
• Resources

3. Making sure your site is searchable
Library Tools > Library > Library Settings > Advanced Settings:

4. Making sure your site is searchable
This means that your content will be indexed for searching:

5. Our set of example documents
Five Word documents and five Excel documents…

6. The text and properties of the Excel documents
Common language except for “first”, “second”,
“third”, “fourth”, and “fifth”. We also use the Title
and Authors property fields for the files.

7. The text and properties of the Word documents
Common language except for “first”, “second”,
“third”, “fourth”, and “fifth”. We also use the Title
and Authors property fields for the files.

8. Three different search scopes
You can search on All Sites, the specific site that you’re on, or the
specific list that you’re in…

9. If I search on All Sites…

10. If I search on the site that I’m on…

11. If I restrict my search to the specific list…

12. The AND keyword
The AND keyword means that both words have to appear in the item:

13. The AND keyword
If you don’t use a keyword in your search, the default is AND:

14. The OR keyword
The OR keyword means that one OR more of the words have to appear in
the item:

15. Using quotes to search for phrases
If you want to search for a specific phrase, use quotes:

16. The NOT keyword
Use the NOT keyword (or the minus sign) to find items that have one word
but NOT another word:

17. Using parentheses for grouping words
Parentheses are used to group terms that you want to consider as a single
unit that you then put together with other terms:
(“Word document” –first) OR Excel

18. Using the Wildcard character
You can use an asterisk as a wildcard to get all words that start with a
particular set of characters:

19. The Author property
You can search for any files that have certain values in the Authors field:

20. The Title property
You can search for any files that have certain values in the Title field:

21. The Filename property
You can search for specific file names:
filename:”Example Document 01.docx”

22. Search refiners
Refiners allow you to “drill down” into your
search results.

23. Refiner example
We start out with a search for “example” which returns all our documents:
But I only want the Excel documents…

24. Refiner example
Clicking on Microsoft Excel cuts down my results to only five entries:
But I know the document I want was authored by Sandra Mahan…

25. Refiner example
Using the refiners took me from 10 search results to a single item without
having to run three separate searches:

26. To make your site more findable… Best Bets
Key phrases or words can be assigned to specific sites and made to
appear at the top of the search results.

27. Additional Resources
• Keyword Query Language (KQL) syntax reference
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee558911.aspx
• Hyphen, underscore or space? Which one is the best for
SharePoint Search?
http://absolute-sharepoint.com/2014/09/hyphen-underscore-space-one-best-sharepoint-search.
html
• SharePoint 2010 Search New Query Syntax
http://johnrossjr.wordpress.com/2010/05/14/sharepoint-2010-search-new-query-syntax/
• Syntax for SharePoint 2010 Enterprise Search Queries
http://www.glynblogs.com/2012/01/syntax-for-sharepoint-2010-enterprise-search-queries.
html

28. Questions?
• Email:
• thomas.duff@gmail.com
• This presentation will be posted for all to use.