Search

Introduction

Hey! Welcome to Module 8 – Settings & Features. In this module, we’ll cover all the different Settings and options you might encounter in Notion, as well as cover a bunch of features we haven’t covered yet.

First up, let’s talk about Search.

How to use

While a well designed Notion workspace can be easily navigated through hierarchical relationships (pages within pages, databases), usually it’s still fastest to simply search for a page when you know the title or its contents.

On desktop, you can trigger the Notion search menu either by hitting cmd/ctrl + K or clicking “Search” on the top of the Left Sidebar. This will open a menu in the middle of your screen that you can use for searching across your entire Notion workspace.

As you start typing the name of the page you’re looking for, you’ll see better and better matches. Notion’s search algorithm favors recently viewed and edited pages, and so those will appear first. By default, it will search across both page titles and page content (as well as database titles and content). Of course, Search will only display pages you have at least Can view access to.

There are two things Notion’s default search engine (more about default vs AI in a second) can’t do:

Search across multiple workspaces. Any query is always limited to one workspace. If you need to search in a different workspace, you’ll need to manually switch to it first, and then trigger the Search menu again.
Search database properties. The default search algorithm can’t search across database properties (and property values).

Search filters

Once in the Search menu, by clicking on the little three-dash icon in the top-right of that menu, you’ll reveal a few available filter and sort options that can help you narrow down your searches.

Once the options are revealed, you’ll first see Sort. This will simply sort your results either by Best match (Notion’s algorithm), Last Edited (Oldest or Newest first), or Created (Oldest or Newest first). These are based off of the default metadata stored across every single Notion page.

Additionally, you can apply a few different filters:

Title only. This will narrow down the search query to page titles only.
Created by. This will let you only display pages created by a specific individual.
Teamspace. Only display results from a particular Teamspace.
In. Search content within a specific page. (This can be great for searching across many sub-pages nested under a parent page, or across a single database).
Date. This will let you set a date range to filter your search results by. You can set it to Created or Last edited.

Personally, I don’t use Search filters too often (since Notion’s algorithm is actually decent enough to usually provide good results without filtering), but they do come useful when I can’t remember the title of a page, but remember the context, such as who created it, or where and when it was created.

Shortcuts

There are a few cool shortcuts you can use within the Search menu to speed things up. Keep in mind all keyboard shortcuts work best in Notion’s desktop app – in browser, they might be overwritten by your browser’s default shortcuts.

Arrows: up and down to move across your results list
Return to open a highlighted search result
Ctrl + return to open a page in a new tab
Ctrl + L to copy a page’s link

Global Search

Global (or Command) Search is a relatively new feature that lets you open the Notion search window anywhere on your desktop computer (PC or Mac), if you have the Notion desktop app installed.

You can trigger Command Search by hitting Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + K while having the Notion app open. If nothing pops up, find the Notion icon on your menu bar (Mac) or Task bar (Windows), right click on it, click Launch Preferences, and toggle Quick Search on.

This lets you quickly find and open Notion pages without having to Alt/Cmd + Tab to the Notion app window first. Pretty neat if you ask me!

AI Search

Notion recently introduced a newer version of their Search engine, called “AI Search” or “AI Enterprise Search”. This is a separate feature, accessible both through the Search pop up menu as well as the Notion AI interface. This feature is limited to Business and Enterprise plans (since only those plans have unlimited Notion AI), and so we’ll talk about this feature in greater detail in our Notion AI section. From my experience, this new search is a bit better, but it’s definitely not worth upgrading to a higher plan just for this newer Search experience. The usual Search works fine enough for most use cases!

Now, let’s talk everything Comments.