How to Add Properties and Custom Columns to Advanced Search in MOSS 2007

One of the reasons for adding metadata (apart from supporting grouping and filtering within lists) is to enhance your search experience. However, if you cannot specify that you want to search by a particular field e.g. "Faculty", then the quality of your search results and your ability to refine searches will be dramatically reduced.



To Add a custom field to the Advanced Search, you have to do the following:

• Go to the Advanced Search page of the Search Center itself and switch the page to edit mode
• When in Edit mode, Modify the Advanced Search web Part
• Expand the "Properties Node" in the Advanced Search Web Part
• Add an element to the PropertyDefs element with your field:
  
  
• Before this entry will appear in the drop-down menu in the Advanced Search Web Part, you’ll also have to add a PropertyRef element as a child to the ResultType element.
  

For more detail on how Search works for custom fields, see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb608302.aspx