If you didn’t already know, Microsoft Search is a powerful enterprise search platform that is part of the Microsoft 365 service. It can help you find the information from your small business that you need, such as files, charts, websites, and even people, right when you need it.
Integrated across each of the Microsoft 365 apps, Microsoft Search is highly customized for you. So, here are some tips and tricks to getting the most out of Microsoft Search.
Try Microsoft Search in Bing
Our first tip and trick is to try Microsoft Search in Bing. While Microsoft Search is already integrated into the search bar across apps like Outlook, Word, PowerPoint, the Office 365 main page, and SharePoint, it also has an integration with Bing too. Thanks to this, you can get search results from both the web and from your organization in any browser and on any device.
You can try it out by clicking Sign in on the upper-right corner of any page in Bing. Then, on the account menu, next to Work or school account, you’ll want to click Connect. Choose your work or school account, or login.
Once signed in, you’ll notice some search results themed to your workplace, right alongside traditional web results in Bing. This can include people, files, internal websites, links to internal resources and tools, conversations, acronyms, groups, and more. Search is also natural and will work with common works, without using search modifiers or terms like “and” or “or.”
For finding, documents, you also can type in “my files” or “My documents” to find some of the most recent documents shared with you or, worked on.
Use the tabs to find what you want
Our second tip involves finding what you want in Microsoft Search. As Microsoft Search is able to pull all kinds of material, we suggest that you use the tabs in search results to filter what you need for. By default, running a search will list all results under All, but if you use the tabs on the search page, you’ll get better results. These include Files to filter and find just your files, Sites to just find internal company websites, People to find people, and News to look up news posts and items from Yammer. If searching on Bing under Work, you’ll also notice these tabs appear alongside the right side of the screen.
Admins can tailor Microsoft Search
Finally, we have a tip for IT Admins. Microsoft 365 administrators have a bit more control over Microsoft Search than end-users. They can go into settings and plan content for users to see as well as add external connectors by using Microsoft Graph connectors. For even more control, admins can also customize the search results page, with search verticals, and different result types.
Do you use Microsoft Search?
While not equal to Bing or Google which are used to search the world wide web, Microsoft Search is still pretty powerful as it integrates with Office and also Bing. Do you think you’ll check out Microsoft Search? Let us know in the comments below, and check out or Microsoft 365 hub for more Office news and information.