SharePoint is a web-based content management system that can grow large, and have data stored in many different places – such as within documents, web pages, and metadata. It can be a daunting task to have to find and replace text everywhere (or within specific types of content) within SharePoint.
In this article, I will show you how this can be achieved using the SharePoint Essentials Toolkit (free Community Edition available) visit https://cognillo.com.
The SharePoint Essentials Essentials Toolkit will search inside of SharePoint column/field values and also within file content such as Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Adobe PDF, HTML, text, XML, JSON, and more.
How is it different than SharePoint Search?
The SharePoint Essentials Toolkit performs a ‘literal search’. This allows users to find content inside of HTML, JavaScript, Web Part headers and titles, and more. Typically, SharePoint search does not index these types of content.
If you wish to use SharePoint search to find content, this search capability is in the SharePoint Essentials Toolkit under the Discovery section.
Search Only
Searching for content using the SharePoint Essentials Toolkit is simple – just type the text you are searching for and click ‘Run Now’.
You can add multiple search criteria:
Below is an example of the search results. You can easily export the results to Excel.
Search and Replace SharePoint content
It can be very time-consuming to have to find and replace text in SharePoint manually or through scripts.
Searching for text within SharePoint is straightforward using the SharePoint Essentials Toolkit.
First, provide the old value you need to replace (such as ‘Old Product Name’), then provide the new value (such as ‘Our New Product Name’).
Filtering Content for Searches (and Replacement)
You can filter the results in multiple ways. 1) before you execute the job or 2) from the report page by filtering from a column header.
If you are performing a SharePoint text search and replacement, then you must filter before starting the job. This must be done to prevent modifying content that should not be changed.
Below is the section where you can filter what will be processed in the job:
In this example I have chosen to filter by a SharePoint column ‘Project Code’:
When viewing a report, you can also use column filtering to filter the results of your SharePoint content search:
Adding Metadata to the Report
Optionally, you can specify additional SharePoint Field values to be displayed in the report.
That’s it! If you want to learn more about this product, please contact us at https://cognillo.com
Happy SharePointing!
Currently working at Cognillo (https://www.cognillo.com), he has helped architect and develop SharePoint Enterprise products for customers such as the U.S. Navy, U.S. Army, U.N. Security Council of Netherlands, Australian Government, U.S. Dept of Treasury, U.S. Dept of Justice, Canadian Dept of Defense, Scotiabank, JPMorgan CHASE Bank, Intel, Ford Motors, Microsoft, NASA, DARPA, SNC Lavalin, Penguin Books, and more.
He is a proud father of 2, and when he has any spare time, he loves to paint portraits of his kids.
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