How to make custom columns searchable in Sharepoint Office 365?

Question

Our organization uses Office 365 with SharePoint Online (not on premise).

Background/scope: I'm in the mist of a large document migration project, and I have nearly 30,000 files (along with metadata) to transfer to the SharePoint system. I'm using the "Document Center" feature in SharePoint to accomplish this.

Copying the files over is not an issue. Nor is updating the metadata for these files (i use MS Access to update the metadata/columns).

The Wrinkle: What is an issue is the extra columns I've created in SharePoint for this library containing the metadata from the old system is not being searched thru. They're just a few columns (AccountNumber, OwnerFirstName, OwnerLastName, Description, and CompanyName). Each attribute is just a single line of text, and may contain duplicates or can be blank.

THE PROBLEM IS... after I've updated the metadata for those columns, I want to be able to use the default search box in the document library to search thru those columns, but when I put in a search term that I know should produce results, I get no results. See screen shots below:

Document Library: Default View, notice the columns Search by Account Number: No results Search by Owner First Name: No results Search by Description or Title: No results

From my perspective, this should be extremely easy to fix, but I can not find the setting or the instructions on how to make the system search thru the new columns that I've added. I've done a LOT of google searching, and reading Microsoft articles, but nothing like a STEP BY STEP guide to solve my issue. I don't want to read a long winded story about the history of SharePoint columns or data management, I just want instructions on how to make it happen! Frustrated smile here

I have full administrative access to this particular SharePoint site, so that should mean I have the required permission to affect search results and behavior, right? Or am I suppose to wait for Indexing to happen at a certain timeframe? Please help steer me into the right direction because I want to make sure that the files and the metadata columns I created that are associated with these files on this SharePoint Library are searchable before I start the actual full migration of 30,000 files.

Answer 1

1.If you want your columns searchable,you should create a column extra or you should create any column of yours as managed meta instead of single line of text.

I hope you have seen that option while creating new site column.

If you have done with that, let's say for eg: If you create a name column and you are adding meta data for each of the document. Same process ,but while adding to that name column which is single line of text ,make that column as managed meta data.

But you have to follow some procedure, once you create managed meta data column. Whatever value you are adding to that column it should be predefined. This can be done by going to site setting->Site administration->team store management. Once you open this you will see search option, search your managed meta data there,once it shown. please add data to it. You will understand once you reach that link.Go ahead and try.

I hope I am clear. If you have further doubts,you can ask.

Answer 2

Try searching for "columnname:" in the search box in the list/library.

Answer 3

Whenever you add any new column to the list, it will take some time to show the search results. But not too long, at after an hour you should able to see the columns. If this is not working you can try below idea,

1. Create these columns as site columns and add to this document library instead of list columns. Now try to search after couple of minutes.
2. If step 1 is not working, then create a managed property for this site column and try again search.