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O365: Improving Search and Fast Find in Teams and SharePoint

 O365: Improving Search and Fast Find in Teams and SharePoint


Okay. I just spent the last few posts saying how good search is in Office 365 and now I say it can be improved?

Well, even the best can be better. 

SharePoint Search launched with or    followed by selecting SharePoint

gives access to a search tool that spans content across the Office 365 domain and returns results for the user, filtered by the user's level of access.
The search covers file name, meta data and text in the body of the document.

Meta Data

The important thing here is Meta Data. The elements of data that is used to index and categorise information.

Meta Data has been an integral part of Microsoft Office apps for many years with Word automatically creating fields like -



The items listed in the properties column are meta data fields. It can be seen from the above illustration that date and times of creation and last modification, document size, author and editor are automatically populated, but items such as Title and Tags are not.

When Libraries and Lists are created, either in SharePoint or through Teams, the same Meta Data structure is created and appears as Library/List columns




Note: Any document launched from a SharePoint library template will have the facility to include any SharePoint column as a document field. This enables users to enter or update SharePoint Meta Data when editing a library document.

Auto Meta Data entry 

Given that some Meta Data is auto generated - 
  1. Created Date
  2. Date Last modified
  3. Author
  4. Last Editor
Other Meta Data Fields are left to user discretion.

The Title Meta Data field can be very useful in file, document and data search. Title is always indexed in SharePoint and this makes it an ideal candidate for inclusion.

Using the Title Mata data Field to Categorise

Meta Data field content can be added and changed at any time to classify documents. 

If a team is tasked to add Title Data to any library item created or imported that designates the litem as, say a training document, the word Training: can be allocated as the first word in the Title field. If it's a production document, the word Production: can be allocated as the first word in the Title field.

This means that the entire library can be searched, sorted and filtered using just the Meta Data column.

In standard library format data entry into the Title column will be manual and this can allow for quality control issues to arise where entry and typing errors can cause issues. 

However, if quality control is an issue Power Automate can be used to ensure data entry consistency.  


Don't be afraid to experiment, make Office 365 work for you.

We can show you how, or we can do it for you.

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