Forum Discussion
Using SharePoint's search bar to search for metadata tags?
I might be mistaken, but I'm fairly sure when I've used SharePoint in the past, the search bar can be used not only to find document titles, but to search for metadata tags also. I've noticed that th...
Hi Paul de Jong
This is with regards to SharePoint custom columns on a document library, like below. Maybe I'm using the wrong terminology but we typically call these metadata tags.
Our users want to be able to use the 'search this site' bar at the top of the screen to search for these specific tags, such as typing in "risk" and it showing all documents tagged with that. As mentioned before I recall this working fine when I first noticed it a year or so ago, but now when we try this we just see no results.
Toby958
Clear, we are talking about the same fields.
To investigate further I would start with:
- check if you can search for words in the document title
- check if you can search for words in the body of the document
- are the columns of a special type?
The search bar works fine with custom columns in my tenant so the problem does not affect all tenants.
Paul
Hi Paul de Jong
The search bar works fine when searching for word in the document title. Searching for words in the body of the document does not return any results.
The column I am testing on is simply the built in 'keywords' column, which is simply a multi line of text field.
Toby958
The built-in keywords column should be searchable. I just double checked it on one of my tenants.
One more check: does the file use encryption? Simply open the Word file in the browser or local Word. If it is encrypted it will ask for a password.
If it does use encruption, that would then explain why the body of the file is not searchable.
If it does not use encryption then that is unexpected and indicates that the indexing of the document has failed. It may then also affect the indexing of the document's metadata.Paul
Hi Paul de Jong
Looks like it must be an indexing issue then, since the test documents we've used are just simple word docs with no protection on them. I'll go ahead and raise a ticket with Microsoft's support, thanks for all the help.
Toby