Salesforce global search is a robust search feature that allows you to search almost every field in every record of Salesforce.
Read on for some tips and tricks on how to use global search so you can find what you’re looking for faster.
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- Give it a minute. After a record is created or updated, you may need to wait a few minutes for the new text to be indexed and become searchable.
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- Use Search All on the left. You may need to select “Search all objects” – by default Salesforce will search frequently accessed objects (meaning objects YOU recently or frequently view and edit). You can see on the left which objects have been searched (just like Amazon!). If the object you are looking for is not listed, click the Search all link. You can also “pin” objects to the top of your filters in the left hand column. Click the push pin icon and it will stick to the top for your future searches. If you know specifically which object you’re searching for, click the object name on the left after you do your search.
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- Use quotes to narrow it down. Search for Mary Martinez and you will get results for Mary OR Martinez anywhere in a record. Doing a search for “Mary Martinez” will only return results where those two words appear next to each other in that order.
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- Nicknames! Salesforce has a nickname search feature. Not sure if someone goes by Bill or William? Sue or Susan? Doing a search for Sue returns Susan and Sue. A search for Susan returns Susan and Sue.
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- Search operators. Get specific with search operators. AND will search for items that match all search terms. AND NOT will search for items that don’t contain the search term. OR will search for items containing at least one of the search terms.
- Wildcards. We saved the best for last. Salesforce search uses wildcards in search queries.
- The asterisk (*) wildcard is used to match one or more characters
- The question mark (?) wildcard matches single characters of the same type as the character before it
Examples of using wildcards:
- If you search for eco* you’ll get items with ecommerce, ecology, economics and other similar matches
- Searching for ta?k finds items like task and talk, but not ta5k
- If you wanted to match renewal2 using a wildcard search, the best way to do it is to use renewal* and not renewal?
7. The bad news. Unfortunately, the following types of fields cannot be searched in Salesforce:
- Date (this includes Birthdate)
- Picklist values (such as County or Disability)
**Advanced Admin Hack! For those of you who absolutely HAVE to be able to search by values in a picklist, try this hack. Create a text field to hold the value in the picklist. Create a workflow or process that fires every time the record is edited. Have it populate the text field with the value of the picklist. Test to make sure it’s working, then move the text field to the bottom of the page in the System Information section.
Want to learn more? Resources from Salesforce:
Salesforce Search Basics https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=basics_search_records.htm&type=0&language=en_US&release=208.9
https://success.salesforce.com/answers?id=90630000000gu89AAA
https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=000233962&type=1
