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Once upon a time, the Onedrive search feature allowed you to search file contents, as well as file names.
Now it appears that Onedrive only allows you to search file names.
When did this change, and why? Content searches were a very practical feature.
Microsoft will lose users to better services (such as Google Drive) if it continues to make regressive changes like this. Being able to search file contents is a very low bar in 2024.
A Microsoft file hosting and synchronization service.
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
Didn't change any setting -- it just began to work again.
Maybe they're "rolling out" a fix that hasn't yet reached all users. In fact, I think I remember having to log in again recently (something I don't usually have to do, since I stay logged in on Chrome). Maybe logging out & logging in again might work?
I have the same problem.
It's a big problem: we use onedrive also for a business way.
I don't want switch to GDrive: but I'll be forced! I follow this post: maybe I can find the way!
Luigi
My search returns no results in OneDrive, even if I search for a file by its name that's right there in the folder on the screen. I have this issue in my browser, in the OneDrive app on PC, on iPad and on iOS. I use OneDrive to store thousands of sheet music files and backing tracks that I can pull up as a performing musician. I used it for years to quickly search and pull up my tracks while playing live. Now, it returns "No results" for anything I search for. Absolutely useless for me now other than to store files that I can't search or find. I built up everything in OneDrive and it worked great - then you had to change the app and break a super basic functionality like "search" - are you kidding me. What other function in a cloud file storage app is more important than "search"? I can't think of one, aside from the obvious need to ensure that the file itself doesn't disappear. If you can't get "search" to work reliably, I'm nervous I'll wake up one day and my files will actually disappear and you'll have no answer. I have no choice but to start migrating my OneDrive over to Google, iCloud, Dropbox or any other cloud services that have mastered the basic search function. Unbelievable.
After being unavailable for approximately a year, the search functionality returned a couple of weeks ago, and I observed that it now operates reliably, including the ability to search within file contents.
Despite the return of this functionality, I think that for users who expect consistency and stability from cloud services, OneDrive is too unreliable.
Good news - it still doesn't work for me, but perhaps it will before the end of my current subscription.
I emailed support, and got this response yesterday (6 May 2025); it's completely impractical to rename thousands of files.
We completely understand your concern. However, it is not possible to search for a file using the text written inside it.
You can only search for the file by its name. If needed, you can rename the file to make it easier to find based on your preference. Let us know if you need any further assistance.
Thank you for choosing Microsoft.
Regards
Shivam H.
OneDrive Support Team,
Working Hours: 09:00PM to 5:30AM PST | Mon-Fri