Using the Search function in OneDrive

One of the advantage of having your personal files in OneDrive is that you have the capabilities of the Office 365 search engine when it comes to finding data. You’re not just restricted to searching for file names, either. The search indexes the content of the files, and gives you a powerful search experience. Here’s how you can use it to find your data quickly…

Go into Office 365 (http://portal.office.com), and navigate to your OneDrive area. Once there, you should see a Search Everything field in the upper left corner:

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Start typing in your search term. Once you stop typing, you’ll get a pop-up box showing you a small number of top search results. To get more search results, you can either hit Enter after typing your search term, or click on the See More Results link at the bottom of the search results:

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When you get your full search results back, you’ll also have a Filters panel on the right side of the browser window. That will allow you to narrow down the age of the files being returned in the search, as well as selecting what file type(s) you’re wanting to see. You can also narrow down the search results by the person who authored the document:

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In this example, I wanted to only get PowerPoint files in my search results. When I clicked the checkbox next to PowerPoint file types, my list instantly changed to only show me that type of file:

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8 Comments

  1. After selecting PPT files only, is it possible to download them simultaneously? I cannot see a download button. How can I do this?

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  2. One of my guest is trying to search a file name in a folder shared by me and the guest is not able to see the option “See More Results” also the enter key is not working in the search box. By default it is displaying 3 results while typing the file name starting letters and in the bottom it is showing “Search Everything” option only and if user clicks it is talking to my organization external user login page which should be the case if i tried in my personal laptop. Any suggestions.

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  3. It’s been a nightmare to look for files or folders using the search buttons on OneDrive. From my perspective this search should be limited to the specific location in a folder. However, if the key word I’m using is located in many other locations in my computer, this will bring me much more than what I need (all the files/folders across my entire computer. There’s no way to specify that I’m just looking for a folder’s name within the specific location that I have in my screen. The options to filter have not considered folders names. There’s no way to open the location field to get more information where these files are alocated. You cannot sort the fields as the date modified. It’s really a nightmare…

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  4. Yeah, you can find stuff, but how can you move, download or delete it? I just want to copy the batch of what I brought up to my computer, but there seem to be no buttons for that. Do you have any ideas? I’d be so grateful.

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  5. Is there any way to search ONLY a single folder? Searching everything saved on onedrive is pretty useless, unless you are looking for every instance across every document you might ever have saved or stored (rather than just searching for a document in a current folder you are using)

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