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Search term not used properly RRS feed

  • Question

  • I am trying to search the forums for items with the term "SWF-malform-1" in it because of a message I received from my Forefront installation.  I get lots of responses for items with "swf" or with "malformed" or other such terms in them, but these do not address what I want to search for.  I tried searching both with and without quotes around the phrase, but I get the same results.  How do I search on this term WITHOUT the forum's search function breaking it up and searching in bits and pieces of the term?

    Thank you very much.

    Wednesday, January 22, 2014 4:03 PM

Answers

  • Hi,

    You're probably not going to like this response, but my guess is that you're not going to be able to get any useful results from the search at all. I've tried several different combinations, but I can't get anything useful to return either.

    The search feature here is pretty terrible, considering you can't even search with AND.


    Don't retire TechNet! - (Don't give up yet - 12,575+ strong and growing)


    • Edited by Mike Laughlin Wednesday, January 22, 2014 4:19 PM
    • Proposed as answer by Naomi N Thursday, January 23, 2014 4:58 PM
    • Marked as answer by Logan Burt Friday, January 24, 2014 10:26 AM
    Wednesday, January 22, 2014 4:18 PM

All replies

  • Hi,

    You're probably not going to like this response, but my guess is that you're not going to be able to get any useful results from the search at all. I've tried several different combinations, but I can't get anything useful to return either.

    The search feature here is pretty terrible, considering you can't even search with AND.


    Don't retire TechNet! - (Don't give up yet - 12,575+ strong and growing)


    • Edited by Mike Laughlin Wednesday, January 22, 2014 4:19 PM
    • Proposed as answer by Naomi N Thursday, January 23, 2014 4:58 PM
    • Marked as answer by Logan Burt Friday, January 24, 2014 10:26 AM
    Wednesday, January 22, 2014 4:18 PM
  • I am trying to search the forums for items with the term "SWF-malform-1" in it because of a message I received from my Forefront installation.  I get lots of responses for items with "swf" or with "malformed" or other such terms in them, but these do not address what I want to search for.  I tried searching both with and without quotes around the phrase, but I get the same results.  How do I search on this term WITHOUT the forum's search function breaking it up and searching in bits and pieces of the term?

    Thank you very much.

    You cannot alter any of the "search" tools parameters.  It always searches with an OR for all search terms so the more terms you search on, the worse your results get.  If you would like to let the powers that be know how you feel about this, please go to the following link and vote it up.  Microsoft has said that they take into account the number of votes a thread gets when they are deciding which problems to fix on the forums.  So the more votes this thread gets, the more likely it is to be fixed (in theory):

    http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/9cf8ad4b-5111-4f84-9809-99cd8f1b7152/make-the-forum-search-tool-useful?forum=suggest


    Please do not read this sentence. Please ignore the previous sentence.

    • Proposed as answer by Naomi N Thursday, January 23, 2014 4:58 PM
    Wednesday, January 22, 2014 5:33 PM
  • I am trying to search the forums for items with the term "SWF-malform-1" in it because of a message I received from my Forefront installation. 

    Was this you?

    http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/forefront/en-US/a7089bdc-33cc-416b-9ec3-7558c134b871/possible-false-positive-from-forefront?forum=FSENext

    (BING search for
       "SWF-malform-1" site:microsoft.com

    )

    Seems to be the only one.   Google with the same search found essentially the same thing but kept some of the redundancy caused by your post here.



    Robert Aldwinckle
    ---

    Thursday, January 23, 2014 10:10 PM
  • Thank you very much.  You're right that I don't like your answer, but I suspected that was going to be the case.  I had hoped that there was some way of crafting the search term so that it would search on only the term itself, but why would the search functionality be that useful?

    I will add my 2 cents to that thread you referenced.

    Thanks again.

    Friday, January 24, 2014 10:29 AM
  • Yes, that was me.  I posted this item to ask about the search functionality of the forums, and I had posted the other thread in the Forefront forum to ask about the "virus" itself.
    Friday, January 24, 2014 10:30 AM
  • As an FYI we are looking to address issues around search in our next Sprint.

    Forums Program Manager

    Thursday, April 17, 2014 7:22 PM
  • As an FYI we are looking to address issues around search in our next Sprint.

    Forums Program Manager


    That's great, thanks for the update Bryant.

    Don't retire TechNet! - (Don't give up yet - 12,830+ strong and growing)

    Thursday, April 17, 2014 7:24 PM
  • As an FYI we are looking to address issues around search in our next Sprint.

    Forums Program Manager

    Glad to hear this.  PLEASE look at this thread to see suggestions that were compiled as a result of what the users of these forums want:

    http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/9cf8ad4b-5111-4f84-9809-99cd8f1b7152/make-the-forum-search-tool-useful?forum=suggest


    Please do not read this sentence. Please ignore the previous sentence.


    Thursday, April 17, 2014 8:46 PM
  • Thanks Kamin, we will definitely refer to this thread!

    Forums Program Manager

    Thursday, April 17, 2014 8:47 PM