Search and Filter for Messages, People and Files

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About this lesson

Search for keywords and phrases across conversations, people, and files and apply filters to refine search results. 

Quick reference

Search and Filter for Messages, People, and Files

Learn how to search for messages, people, files, and apps across Teams and filter the search results. 

When to use

To find things quickly in Teams, we need to know how to use search and filter effectively. 

Instructions

There are several search and filtering options to help us find files, messages, and people in Teams. 

The Search Bar

At the top of the Teams window is the search bar. We can use this bar to search in Teams for specific keywords or phrases. 

  • Click in the search bar. 
  • Type 'Sales'.

Teams will search across channels, files, apps, and people and return any results it finds that match the search term. 

  • Delete the search term. 
  • Type 'Ben'.

Teams will find team members that match the search term. 

  • Delete the search term.
  • Type 'Plaza'. 

Teams hasn't found any files, people, or channels that match the search term but if we press Enter, it will search messages. 

  • Click Go to message to jump to the message that contains the search term. 

Search in a Specific Channel

We can be more specific when searching and limit the search to a channel. 

  • Go to the channel to search in. 
  • Press CTRL+F. 

The search bar will now show the channel name. 

  • Type in 'Brainstorm'. 

Teams will return a list of messages where this term was mentioned. 

Search in Private Conversations

We can search our private conversations. Maybe we are looking for a conversation we had with a particular person. 

  • Click on Chat. 
  • Click in the search bar. 
  • Type 'Jen' and press Enter. 

Teams will jump us to the conversation. 

Search with KQL (Keyboard Query Language)

We can use KQL to search for specific things in Teams. For example, we might want to search for all messages from a particular person. 

  • Click in the search bar. 
  • Type the word From:
  • Select a team member from the list.

What about if we want to search in a particular channel for a specific word? Maybe we want to search for the word 'Plaza' in the 'Development' channel. 

  • Click in the search bar. 
  • Type In:Developer "Plaza"

Filter Search Results

We can filter our search results in Teams. Let's use the example above. 

  • Click in the search bar. 
  • Type In:Developer "Plaza"

This will return a list of results. Notice at the top we can filter by All, Messages, People, and Files. 

If we filter by Messages, we have further filters. We can filter by Type, Teams and channels, From, Date, @mentions me, Has attachment, and Hide apps and bots.

Hints & tips

  • Do a wildcard search by adding an asterisk (*), e.g. Present* will return everything that starts with 'Present'. It will return Presentation, Presenting, Presented, etc. 
  • To search for an exact phrase that contains more than one word, put the phrase in quote marks, e.g. "Crown Plaza". 
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  • 00:04 There are several search and filtering options to help you find files,
  • 00:09 people, and messages in Teams.
  • 00:11 If you notice at the top of your Team's window, we have a Search bar.
  • 00:16 Sometimes referred to as the command bar, and
  • 00:19 this is where we can come if we're looking for something specific.
  • 00:23 For example, if I type in search term, sales,
  • 00:27 notice below, it shows me where it's found that key word.
  • 00:33 So the top yet here is an Excel spreadsheet that I've shared,
  • 00:36 called Sales Figures Q1.
  • 00:39 It's also found a channel called Sales in Northwind Traders.
  • 00:44 It's found a couple of other files, and it's also showing me
  • 00:48 any apps that are available to add in Teams with the word sales in them.
  • 00:53 So it does a universal search across your messages, channels, apps, and files.
  • 00:59 Let's remove that search term and replace it with something else.
  • 01:03 What if I'm looking for a specific person?
  • 01:06 Well, you might have guessed it, we can simply type in their name, for
  • 01:11 example, Ben, and you can see there at the top, it is Ben Lee.
  • 01:15 If I want to jump to Ben Lee, I can simply click, and
  • 01:18 it's going to jump me to the chat area where I can start a brand
  • 01:22 new conversation with this particular contact.
  • 01:26 Now, what about if I type in the search term, let's go for Plaza?
  • 01:32 Now, it's not showing me anything currently, but if I hit Enter,
  • 01:35 it's going to go away and search through all of my messages.
  • 01:39 And you can see here that I've mentioned the Crown Plaza Hotel in a conversation.
  • 01:44 And if I want to quickly jump to that specific conversation,
  • 01:47 I can click the Go to message button on the right hand side, and
  • 01:51 I'm going to be taken to the point of the conversation where that word was posted.
  • 01:56 Now, you can get a little bit more specific with where you're searching.
  • 02:00 For example, let's go to the Northwind Traders General channel.
  • 02:06 Now, if we press the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+F, take a look up in that command
  • 02:11 bar at the top, it's searching specifically in the General channel.
  • 02:16 So it's not going to do a universal search across all of my Teams and
  • 02:19 all of my channels.
  • 02:21 Anything I type in here, it's just looking for
  • 02:24 within the General channel of Northwind Traders.
  • 02:27 So if I type in, let's go for Brainstorm and hit Enter, you can see is pulling
  • 02:33 up on the left hand side, where I've mentioned that word in this conversation.
  • 02:39 So don't forget about that keyboard shortcut to limit your search to
  • 02:42 the channel that you're in only.
  • 02:44 And remember if you ever want to clear your search, you can click
  • 02:48 the cross in the Search bar, and you're ready to type in other search terms.
  • 02:52 Another thing you can do is search through your one to one and group conversations.
  • 02:56 So if we go to Chat, and I'm looking for
  • 02:59 a specific conversation that I had with somebody else, so
  • 03:03 let's say I'm looking for the conversation that I had with Jen earlier.
  • 03:07 I could type in Jen, I can select her name,
  • 03:11 and it's going to jump me back to that conversation.
  • 03:15 Now, another thing you can do when you're searching in Teams is
  • 03:20 use what we call KQL, keyboard query language.
  • 03:23 For example, if I go up to the Search bar at the top,
  • 03:28 I could type in the word From an add a colon, and
  • 03:32 then I can choose to search for messages from a specific person.
  • 03:37 So let's choose Ben, again, and
  • 03:40 it's going to jump me back to that draft conversation.
  • 03:43 I haven't actually had any private conversations with Ben.
  • 03:47 Alternatively, what I could do is type in the word In, and then a colon, and
  • 03:52 I can search in a particular channel.
  • 03:55 So maybe I want to search in the Development channel for
  • 03:58 the term Plaza.
  • 04:03 And notice that I've put the word Plaza in quote marks.
  • 04:07 If I hit Enter, it's going to run, and it's going to do that search for me.
  • 04:11 And notice just above, I can filter these messages.
  • 04:15 Now, I only have one message in the Development channel that contains
  • 04:19 the word Plaza.
  • 04:20 But if I had quite a few search results,
  • 04:23 I could break these down between messages, people, and also files.
  • 04:28 And notice that the only one that I have here is Messages.
  • 04:32 Notice that we also have some further filters underneath here.
  • 04:36 So again, if you have a long list of search results that are returned,
  • 04:40 you can apply these filters.
  • 04:42 For example, we can filter by type, we can filter by specific Teams or channels.
  • 04:49 We can filter by who it's from or the date that it was sent.
  • 04:54 We can filter by @mentioned, so am I @mentioned in this post, or
  • 04:59 if it has an attachment?
  • 05:00 And we can also choose to hide any search results that are coming from apps
  • 05:05 and bots.
  • 05:06 So quite a few filtering options in here as well.
  • 05:10 So sometimes it's quite nice to use this KQL, keyboard query language.
  • 05:15 There are lots of different terms that you can search for,
  • 05:17 not just the two that I've showed you.
  • 05:18 For example, you could search by subject or you could search by sent date,
  • 05:23 things like that.
  • 05:24 If you like this definitely worth having a little Google and
  • 05:28 pulling up the full list of queries that you can run.
  • 05:31 And just a final couple of tips when it comes to searching in Teams.
  • 05:35 As with most applications, if you want to do a wildcard search or search for
  • 05:40 parts of the word, you can use an asterisk if I want to search for
  • 05:44 everything that starts with the word Pitch.
  • 05:47 I could type in Pitch, and then add an asterisk and run that search.
  • 05:52 And also, if you want to search for an exact phrase,
  • 05:55 which may be contains more than one word, you need to put that in quote marks.
  • 06:00 So if I type in Crown Plaza as my search tab and hit Enter,
  • 06:05 it's only going to show me posts that contain exactly that phrase.
  • 06:10 So that is it, those are some of the ways that you can search and filter in Teams.

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