Search Tricks in Teams

      An Introduction to KQL

      Keyword query language (KQL) is a scary-sounding-but-actually-easy-to-use set of features for improving your searches so you get the best results you can in Teams (and across all Microsoft Search boxes). KQL includes a number of terms, symbols, and functions you can include in your search term to specify exactly what you mean when searching. A few of the best KQL terms are listed in this section. For the full list, search Microsoft KQL in your favorite search engine to find the most up-to-date article on all your options.

      NOT and -

      Excluding certain terms from search results is one of the most useful—if lesser known—features in most search engines, including Microsoft and Teams search. Place a - (simple hyphen or dash without a space) or the word NOT (and a space) before a word to exclude that term from your results. NOT is especially useful for removing extraneous words or terms that get associated with a word you might be searching. For example, you might want to know about the vision package to find out whether glasses are covered for you this year, yet you keep getting corporate mission vision values items in your search results. Simply search vision package -mission to remove the bad results.

      Quotes

      Add quotation marks around a phrase to return results with exactly that phrase. For example, searching revenue projection will return results that include both words, but they could be anywhere in the result; however, “revenue projection” will only be in the results if the exact phrase