Monday, January 22, 2018

How to make the description text in a URL field searchable in SharePoint

This question came up in a TechCommunity forum, so I figured I’d share it with everyone.

In order for this to work you need to use a site column as this will create a special automatic crawled property which also includes the URL description. Here are the steps needed:

  • Create a new site site column named for example mAdcOWURL
  • Add the column to a list/library
  • Add a new item to the list/library and set the value for mAdcOWURL
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  • Wait for indexing to occur (it’s done when you can search for your item)
  • Create a new managed property of type Text
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    • Name: mAdcOWText
    • Check searchable and retrievable (nice to check if the property have a value)
    • Map the crawled property ows_q_URLH_mAdcOWUrl
  • Delete the test item, and add the items needed

When the new items are indexed you should get a match on both the terms in the URL as well as terms in the description.

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