Share via

How can I search for an exact phrase in OneNote (modern)?

Anonymous
2018-12-05T18:21:03+00:00

I'm looking for a way to look for only exact phrases among my notebooks. Ideally, it should work just as a google search when putting quotation marks around the search phrase.

When I do this in OneNote--e.g. searching for "hello world"--I'm not only seeing matches for hello world, but also for both hello and world. Is there a way to make the OneNote search engine to filter these partial matches out

Best regards

Microsoft 365 and Office | OneNote | For home | Windows

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

0 comments

20 answers

Sort by: Most helpful
Most helpful Newest Oldest
  1. Anonymous
    2018-12-06T15:18:27+00:00

    OK but that's not what I need.

    What I want is that when I look for "hello word", all matches for that phrase show up in the search results.

    I just don't want the partial matches for either hello or world to show up.

    Was this answer helpful?

    40+ people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  2. Anonymous
    2018-12-23T17:01:22+00:00

    Thank you @NoiseFilter !!  … for patiently explaining this problem.  This is just one of several disconnects between their desktop and web versions but probably the most frustrating one.  Hopefully this will help them get basic search function improvement implemented soon.

    Was this answer helpful?

    30+ people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  3. Anonymous
    2018-12-08T11:08:40+00:00

    (I have reset OneNote in the meantime, and the problem persists.)

    You are also misunderstanding me, Jordan.

    What you have to do is create pages that contain all the words of the phrase in question, just not in the correct order.

    Try doing this:

    1. Create a page with the following content:

    Hello my dear friend. Today is my sister's birthday.

    1. Using Ctrl+E, search for the phrase "hello dear sister". Unfortunately, this page will then show up as containing match. Look:

    Was this answer helpful?

    10+ people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  4. Anonymous
    2018-12-07T04:21:32+00:00

    Thanks for clarifying that. This time, I’ve created multiple test notebooks in my OneNote account that contain sections and pages. I’ve tried searching for the phrase online video among notebooks (Ctrl+E) with and without the quotation marks, please refer to these screenshots:

    Searched without quotation marks:

    Searched with quotation marks:

    I was still able to successfully search for the specific phrase that I’m looking for among the notebooks that I have on my account.

    Just to confirm, does this behavior also happen on the other applications you have when searching a phrase?

    To notify us and have us get back to you, simply reply to this post.

    Was this answer helpful?

    10+ people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  5. Anonymous
    2018-12-06T14:07:56+00:00

    I'm afraid i can't follow. What does this 'copying link to paragraph' accomplish, and how is it useful for my goal to look for precise phrases?

    Was this answer helpful?

    10+ people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments