Search bar in sharepoint list does not find substrings

Question

In my SharePoint list, I want to be able to search for records based on the values in a specific column, specifically the "Surname" column. My approach is to type a string into the search bar and hit search. However, I’ve noticed that this does not return records where the column contains the search term as part of a longer string.

For example, consider the following table:

Surname	Original Name
Value	FirstName Value
ValueLong	FirstName Value
ValueLonger	FirstName ValueLonger

If I enter Value into the search bar, I would expect all rows to be returned. However, only the first two rows are shown. The third row is not returned, but the second is, as it contains "FirstName Value". It seems that the search only matches exact words or strings, not substrings within a larger value.

Why does this happen? Is there any way to configure the list so that searching will return all records containing the search term as a substring?

Thank you in advance for the response.

Answer 1

Hi Řehulka Erik

Welcome to Microsoft Q&A forum 

Thank you for raising your concern about searching feature in SharePoint 

To the best of our knowledge, the current behavior of the “Search this list” box only finding items that start with the typed text is expected and by design in SharePoint 

The list search box uses a lightweight, prefix-based index that is optimized for performance on very large lists (tens or hundreds of thousands of items). Full substring/contained-in search (“contains” anywhere in the word) would significantly slow down the search on large lists, so Microsoft intentionally limits the built-in box to prefix matching + wildcard. 

We completely understand that this feel limiting and not intuitive for end users 

To improve the experience, I recommend: 

• Add an asterisk at the end (e.g., “can*” to find “Canada”) 
• Use column filters instead of the search box 

Personally, I completely agree and fully understand how convenient it would be for end users to have true ‘contains’ (substring) search in the SharePoint list search box without having to remember to add a wildcard every time. It definitely great improvement to the current availabilities of Microsoft 365 apps. In that case, I sincerely recommend raising your idea in Microsoft Feedback portal 

1. Visit the Microsoft Feedback Portal: 

Go to: Microsoft 365 Feedback Hub > Send Feedback > Describe your proposal in detail  

1. Upvote & collaborate: 

Check existing suggestions and upvote similar ones. The more votes an idea gets, the higher its priority 

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