Google Docs Training Tutorials – Searches
Google Docs Tutorial - Part 6. As you continue to use Google Docs more extensively, you will have a longer and longer list of documents. Previously, you saw how to view your documents by using the All items options. Another way to find your documents is by using Searches.
Assuming you have a long list of documents, as pictured below, and you may want to find one particular document. The easiest way to do this is with a “search.”
To search, go to the search text box and type some key words into the search bar. In an example, if the word “newsletter” is typed in the search text box (as seen below), you can see that Google Docs already finds a document that has “newsletter” in the title. You could go ahead and click the document here, and the document will actually open for you.
Alternatively, you can click on Search Docs button, so that you get a list of documents that have “newsletter” in the document or in the title. So in the example, you can see two files, which include the Banana Lovers Newsletter.
There is also another way to search with more advanced options. When starting a new search, be sure to clear out the search bar with previous search words. To the right of the Search Docs button, you will notice there is a link called Show search options which you can click.
That opens more detailed search options, which you can see below. You can put in a key word to be searched for within a document in the Has the words: box, or you can put in a key word for the names of documents to be searched in the Named: box.
You also have the option to choose the Type: of document that is searched – whether it is a folder, PDF, document, presentation, or a spreadsheet. Also you can choose to Search: All items, only ones owned by you, starred items, hidden items, or item in the trash.
You can also search for items within a folder by clicking on Search folders:. Since there are no folders in this case, you would just choose Cancel. Folders will be covered later.
You can also look for documents by searching them by their Sharing status – whether they are shared by Any, Private (not shared), Shared by you, Shared with you, or Published. You can even search by sharing with a particular user by typing their name in the Shared With: box, or by a particular owner by typing the same name (or an email address) in the Owner Is: box.
Lastly, you can search by the Date the document was last modified or opened. You can put within a day, 3 days, a week, 2 weeks, etc., or you can put a particular date in the text box.
Once you have entered all the settings that you want in the search, you would click the Search Docs button to see your list of “found” documents, and then you would have the option of saving the search.
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To practice with the advanced search options, here is an example. Since you have seen the banana tree project files, here is how you could get all of the banana tree documents in one search. For the most part, the names of those documents contain “banana,” so you could type “banana” in the Named: text box and search All types of documents since there are several different types of documents. In this example, keep Search: to All items and nothing needs to be selected in the Sharing: or Date section. Then you would click the Search Docs button, as shown below.
The results are displayed on the next page. You see a list of items that have “banana” in the title. If you want to easily find these documents in the future, you should save this search.
To save these search results, click on the Save this search link. A window opens (see below) that asks you to name the search. For this example, “Banana Project” is entered and then you can click OK.
Your saved search will show up on the left hand side of your page under Saved searches. So if you were to go back to the All items list where all of the documents can be seen, there are some that do not have “banana” in the title. If you only want to see the Banana objects, you could quickly go back by clicking on Banana Project under the Saved searches option.
So far, you have explored some easy ways to find your documents within Google Docs list of documents – by creating a search or just searching using the search bar. If you want to close the advanced search options and get back to the search bar, you close this box by clicking on Hide Search Options link and you are back to search bar. So you are now familiar with two nice ways of finding your documents using Search.
