SharePoint search on local file drive - Why and How

A team member asked me why in some situation we need to use SharePoint search on local file drive as we can do 'search' directly on the folder in windows. I think it is necessary to do some research to show why and why the benifit is to do this. And more importantly - HOW.

 

WHY?

If you've played around with SharePoint local file search the answer is straight-forward:

• You can let it search multiple local file drives, but using windows you can hardly do this.
• SharePoint can search 'into' the real content even the keyword is in content of files in zip file. See the comparison I did a search for keyword 'issue':
 
• Window built-in search:
• SharePoint search:
  
• SharePoint search can easily filter the result by type/date etc.
• SharePoint can show a bit of content from the files found to give a bit more indication.
• ...

HOW 

It's hard to find a step-by-step guide talking about how to make it work. That's why here I am:-)

 

1. Go to the folder you want to add as a search source, right mouse down and then click "properties"
2. In "Sharing" tab, click "Share" and define the accessability
   
3. Open SharePoint central admin, go to Application Management->Managed Service Application->Search Service Application->Content Source
4. Click "New Content Source", specify "Content Source Type" as "File Shares", use the share folder path e.g. //mycomputer/myfolder
5. Save and run full crawl
6. In "Scopes", add your newly created content source as a scope. After you save it will trigger a timer job to complete the setting of scope, generally takes 15 mins.
7. After that the new local folder content source is ready for search!

Now create a search center. and then

 

1. in "site settings", go to "Search scopes", add the newly created scope into search.
   

1,2,3 go! you can search your local drive now!