SharePoint 2010 + Search within document sets

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 15:15:43 +0000

I could play a game of “state the obvious” and say that SharePoint 2010 search is powerful. It’s really an incredible beast - and that’s even without any FAST goodies in there. But something that isn’t obviously supported OOTB but seems there’s a few people out there trying to do - search within folders, or in my case, Document Sets. SharePoint search was already configured and, actually, I could search within document sets, by doing a site wide search and then using the refinement panel (on the left hand side of a search result page in a search center) to narrow it down to my document set. What I wanted to do was perform this search directly from a search box.

As you use the refinement panel, you’ll notice that the URL changes, as you stack up the filters, and as it happens, that’s all that’s required is a properly crafted URL:

<br /> http://yoursite/_layouts/OssSearchResults.aspx?k=[searchterms] <strong>site:"http://yoursite/yourlibrary/yourdocset"</strong>

Note the highlighted part - you can restrict your search results to a specified document set (or folder) by supplying the URL in to the site: refinement option/filter.

With that bit taken care of, the challenge was to get a searchbox that would do this dynamically - i.e., craft the URL properly to apply the filter and direct through to the search results page properly. It’s possible using a standard search box and the trusty old Content Editor.

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SharePoint 2010 + Search within document sets