How to add a text input field and button to query a list?

Question

Sorry if this is a very basic question, but I haven't been able to find the right tutorial for this.

I have a document library. I want to add a Web Part (I think) to the List page for this document library that will let me type some text into a field, press a submit button, and then get the list filtered to only show those items that have that text in their Title field.

I tried adding a Search Box to the page, but I wasn't clear on how to link the box to the list, and in any event when I typed some text in that and clicked the button, no results were found, even though the text string exists in the Title field for some entries.

Is Search Box the right tool for this and just needs to be configured differently? Or is there a different way to handle this?

Answer 1

If you have the enterprise edition than you have a set of filter web parts you can use. You can look at the Text, Lookup, and SharePoint list filters. You connect the filter to the list via webpart connections.

You can gain more control by using the DataView Webpart (DVWP) - you can only add this from SharePoint Designer. Once you have that and a filter you can gain more control over how it is filtered.

A good walk thru is provided by Laura Rogers here

She is doing the above by using the list view properties and assigning a parameter from the text filter web part. By default the text filter web part requires an exact match - however with SharePoint designer you can set the operator to contains, so it will accept partial matches.