Searching SharePoint Documents

Microsoft hides the power of searching in SharePoint. Like Google, there are many keywords (MS calls them "Properties") and Operators that will allow you to refine what is displayed on a SharePoint site. Microsoft has a detailed guide, but not a condensed "Cheat Sheat". That's why I've created one. This is much less extensive than the full MS list.

• The focus here is on searching on and in documents on a site, although the search works more generally.

Here are four examples of searches using these capabilities. Each finds documents addressing smoking policy in an organization. 

• They each assume that you have access to a Sharepoint site that has documents in it that might have policies.

• #1 - Searching names of documents and folders for documents that have either smoking or policy in them

  • (Title:smoking) OR (Title:policy)

  • Note that this will produce ALL documents and folders with either word in them

• #2 - Searching names of documents or folders that have both words in them, in whatever order

  • (Title:smoking) AND (Title:policy)

• #3 - Searching the name and content  of all documents that have both words within 3 words of each other with Smoking first

  • smoking ONEAR(3) policy

• #4 - Showing only folders that have both words within 3 words of each other with Smoking first

  • smoking ONEAR(3) policy spcontenttype:folder

Note: AI Search - As of late 2024 I find that Google Gemini, Perplexity, MS Copilot are often useful to provide the specific syntax for searches like the ones above. For instance, I can now generate a "cheat sheet" like the one above with the following prompt to Perplexity: "give me a tabular cheat sheet for searching sharepoint "

Update: 3/24/2025