Search by partial File Name

Question

I have a question, I am trying to create a query that giving a text, I will find files whose name contain that text, or that their path contains that text.

I tried this querystring in sharepoint search

Here is an example If I enter the text IFL I generate this querystring and run in in sharepoint

(ItemPath:"IFL" OR ItemPath:IFL OR filename:"IFL" OR filename:IFL OR title:"IFL" OR title:IFL)

but for some reason I have files that I have named for example MW2-IFL-081524.xlsx that don’t appear, to find this file I have use MW2-IFL as text to find it and others that have similar name

Answer 1

The value "MW2-IFL-081524" is one value/word. Had the title been "MW2 IFL 081524" you would have been able to search for parts of the title, like FileName:"IFL" or FileName:"081524"

The KQL operator : can only do a "begins with" when dealing with a single word, so FileName:"MW2-IFL*" will work, but FileName:"IFL" will not, neither would FileName:"IFL*" nor FileName:IFL

Answer 2

Hi @Felix Read，

The KQL support prefix matching, you can use the wildcard operator (*). When you use the word is not the prefix word, you will need to specify individual words. It's how KQL query works in SharePoint:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/dev/general-development/keyword-query-language-kql-syntax-reference

When you use words in a free-text KQL query, Search in SharePoint returns results based on exact matches of your words with the terms stored in the full-text index. You can use just a part of a word, from the beginning of the word, by using the wildcard operator (*) to enable prefix matching. In prefix matching, Search in SharePoint matches results with terms that contain the word followed by zero or more characters.

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