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Find a Work Item Based on its ID, Title, or Description (Team Explorer Everywhere)

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You can find and open a work item by performing a search based on either its ID or on a keyword or phrase in its title or description field. You can either perform a simple search, or you can create a more complex query.

Note

The results of any find operation are based on the team project collection to which your client is currently connected. Work item IDs are unique across all work item types in all team projects in a project collection.

A search that is based on a work item ID always opens the work item form.

Searches that are based on a keyword or phrase list all work items that match the parameters that you provide. From the list, you can open a specific work item. Searches are not case sensitive.

In this topic

You can also find work items by using queries. For more information, see Specify Query Criteria

Required Permissions

To perform this procedure, you must be a member of the Readers group or your View work items in this node permission must be set to Allow. For more information, see Team Foundation Server Permissions on the Microsoft Web site.

Finding One or More Work Items Based on Their IDs

To find and open a work item based on its ID

  1. In Team Explorer, right-click the Work Items folder, and then click Go to Work Item.

  2. In the Go To Work Item dialog box, in ID, type the ID number of the work item for which you want to search.

  3. Click OK to open the work item.

To find multiple work items based on their IDs

  1. In Team Explorer, right-click the Work Items folder, and then click New Query.

    Note

    You can also right-click the My Queries or Team Queries folders or any subfolder in those folders.

    A new query opens.

  2. Specify the keyword or phases for your filter criteria. For example, you can construct the set of clauses in the following table:

    And/Or

    Field

    Operator

    Value

    And

    Team Project

    =

    @Project

    And

    Work Item Type

    =

    [Any]

    And

    ID

    IN

    ListOfWorkItems

    Replace ListOfWorkItems with a list of work item IDs, separated by commas.

  3. On the toolbar, click Run Query, review the results, and then adjust the filter criteria as needed.

    The query will return work items whose title or description fields contain the keyword or phrase that you specified. For more information, see Specify Query Criteria.

Finding a Work Item Based on Its Title or Description

To search for and open a work item based on its title or description

  1. In Team Explorer, right-click the Work Items folder, and then click Search.

    Note

    You can also right-click the My Queries or Team Queries folders or any subfolder in those folders.

    The Search for Work Item dialog box appears. By default, the search is performed against the team project from which you invoked the search operation.

  2. Perform one or more of the following tasks:

    • In Search terms, type one or more words, separated by whitespace.

    • In Search terms, type one or more phrases, enclosed in quotation marks (for example, “throws an exception”), separated by whitespace.

    • To find only those work items that contain all the specified terms, in Match, click All Terms.

      By default, this check box is selected.

    • To find those work items that match any of the specified terms, in Match, click Any Terms.

  3. Select the Title and Description check boxes, and clear the History check box.

  4. (Optional) Specify additional criteria to further restrict your search. For more information, see Search for Work Items (Team Explorer Everywhere).

  5. Click OK.

    The search will return work items whose title or description fields contain the keyword or phrase that you specified.

To create a query to find and open a work item based on its title or description

  1. In Team Explorer, right-click the Work Items folder, and then click New Query.

    Note

    You can also right-click the My Queries or Team Queries folders or any subfolder in those folders.

    A new query opens.

  2. Specify the keyword or phases for your filter criteria. For example, you can construct the set of clauses in the following table:

    And/Or

    Field

    Operator

    Value

    Team Project

    =

    @Project

    And

    Title

    Contains

    KeywordOrPhrase

    Or

    Description

    Contains

    KeywordOrPhrase

  3. Highlight the two clauses that contain the Title and Description fields, right-click the set, and then click Group Clause.

  4. On the toolbar, click Run Query, review the results, and then adjust the filter criteria as needed.

    The query will return work items whose title or description fields contain the keyword or phrase that you specified. For more information, see Specify Query Criteria.

See Also

Tasks

Specify Query Criteria

Other Resources

Finding Bugs, Tasks, and Other Work Items (Team Explorer Everywhere)