While Google and other popular search engines are extremely good at full text searches SharePoint performs best when you have well-named files. SharePoint definitely can search the content of documents but by familiarizing yourself with SharePoint search operators such as "title", "author", and "filetype" you can improve the results in SharePoint searches (as well as naming your files well!).
Click here to download a PDF guide, "How to Search in SharePoint"
Prefix |
What It Does |
author:"John Smith" OR author:John* |
Returns content authored by John Smith. |
filename:budget.xlsx OR filename:budget* |
Returns content with the file name budget.xlsx |
title:budget.xlsx |
If SharePoint file has a title it will display it; otherwise, it will return the file name. Giving documents accurate titles will improve the accuracy of your search results. |
filetype:docx |
Returns Microsoft Word documents (alternatively use:xlsx, pdf, png, jpg, etc.) |
modifiedby:"John Smith" OR modified by:John* |
Returns content modified by John Smith. |
write="last week" |
Returns all items written last week (alternatively, use: “today”; “yesterday”; "this week"; “this month”; “last month”; “this year”; “last year”). |
lastmodifiedtime="last week" |
Returns all items modified last week. |
write=2019-10-01..2019-11-01 |
Returns all items written between October 1, 2019 and November 1, 2019. |