Searching in SharePoint doesn't work

Reasons SharePoint search may not work and ways to resolve the issue that SharePoint Search isn't working

There are two fairly commonly reported issues with searching in SharePoint. Either the user has no results, although there should be some because a document matching the search term is visible in the folder they are searching, or there are too many results and the user is unable to find the relevant results. This article contains ways to address each issue.

Solution 

Too many search results, hard to find relevant search results

1. After entering a term in the SharePoint search box and searching, scroll down to the bottom of the results and click the link to Expand Search 
   • ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​The new view of results should show more of the results with the closest title match to the search term at the top of the results

SharePoint search doesn't return any results, but it should

This usually occurs because the folder the user is trying to search was shared to them via a link. SharePoint search requires Rread access to the site given by membership in a permissions group for the site to utilize SharePoint search. There are a few ways to resolve this:

1. If the user does already have Read access to the site (i.e. they are in the Visitors group for the site), have the person who shared the link, re-share and select the Users with Existing Access in the share link settings.
2. If there isn't anything on the site that you wouldn't want the user to be able to read, have a Site Owner add the user to the Visitors group.
3. If there are documents on the site that you wouldn't want the user to have read access to, then 
   1. Provide the user a direct link to the document, so they will not need to search.
   2. If there are lots of documents you do want a group of users to be able search through and read, request a new SharePoint site that can be set up with permissions for that sharing.

SharePoint has some results, but missing expected result

1. Double check search terms being used
2. SharePoint search will only include documents you have permissions to in the results. Verify the user has at least Read access to the document missing from the search results.

Environment

• SharePoint