Forum Discussion
Unable to see documents when searching by folders in Modern Document Libraries
- Folder named "James"
- File named "P45"
- File named "P11D"
- Folder named "Gary"
- File named "P45"
- File named "P11D"
4 Replies
- KarllightCopper Contributor5 years later, here I am reading about this very same problem still persisting in Modern SharePoint. My experience, refining a search with the Path: key, if you search the entire Site and Document Library path, all files are returned from that Document Library. But as soon as you tack on the name of a root folder, the search results simply return that folder and none of the files within that folder.
It's extremely frustrating to find that this limiting search behaviour still persists, even after being reported 5 years ago. 😢
Keen if anyone has any suggestions for searching a Document Library (and to not use any folders isn't an option here). - SelfEqualsThisCopper Contributor
James-Brennan I'm seeing the exact same behavior and it's very frustrating, so thank you for making this post. It seems as though the search query persists after you click on the folder and navigate into it, even though the search bar now shows as being empty.
It's like Microsoft thought you wanted to keep searching for the same query while inside the folder you were searching for. Why would I necessarily want to search for a folder called "Engineering CAD Files" then continue searching only for files with "Engineering CAD Files" in their name inside that folder? The search query should stop when you navigate into a folder that came up in the first search.
As far as I can tell, there is no way to "clear" the search query after you are in the desired folder, so you have to just look at directory path, then stop the search, then manually navigate back into the desired folder. Microsoft, please fix this!
Thanks! Hi,
I had this case in few clients. Last two-three times we simply eliminated all folders. From that point, we have no folders in the library at all (and the client really don't need it) as well we, and the client is happy with this. It was necessary for some small adjustments to the user's behavior, but we solved this few weeks later.
Tobias
- James-BrennanBrass Contributor
Thanks KoprowskiT, using metadata does work when searching but we have various systems that output data as a combination of folders and files and we aren't in a position to change that yet (we are trying though!).
Its a shame as users have used the old classic view and are experienced the way this used to work so therefore end up questioning it.