What fields does SDL Tridion 2011 search use?

Question

I have never had practical success when using the search feature in Tridion (SDL Tridion 2011). I am looking at a list of components. I enter some of the text for one those component's name and the search does not find it. I have to use the exact name of the component for it to find it.

What fields does it search using my criteria?

Is there a wild card symbol I can use or a setting to make it a "contains" query?

Answer 1

The Search Indexer should index all fields of every components as well as text in binaries (PDFs, MS Word Docs etc). I have a running instance of SDL Tridion 2011 and can confirm that it does in fact give results from both binary and normal component content.

I am not entirely sure of the inner workings of the newer SolR version of Tridion, but I imagine that Titles and Full text are indexed separately.

It could be that your indexer is not actually running properly, I have seen the service appear to be in the running state, but not actually processing messages in the Search Queue. Try opening the Purge Queue tool (Normally located at "C:\Program Files (x86)\Tridion\bin\TcmPurgeQueue.exe"), and see if there are lots of messages waiting in the Search Queue. If there are, it may be that items are not being processed properly, try hitting refresh and see if the number is going down.

For a wildcard, you should just be able to use a '*'. I just tested putting the string "Rampusplong" in a component filed, and can confirm that searching for "Rampusplong" or "Rampus*" or "*ampusplo*" return my result, but "Rampus" returns no results.