Search for Work Items (Team Explorer Everywhere)

To perform simpler searches for work items, you can search for work items instead of using the query editor. If you later discover that you need a more complex query, you can open the search in the query editor for further modification.

Limitations of Search

You cannot directly save a search. You can define a search and open that search in the query editor to save it for later use. After you perform a search, you cannot modify the search in the search dialog box, but must use the query editor if you need to make changes. If you perform another search, the dialog box retains the last criteria that you specified.

Required Permissions

To perform this procedure, you must be a member of the Readers group or your View work items in this node permission must be set to Allow. For more information, see the following topic on the Microsoft Web site: Team Foundation Server Permissions.

To search for work items that meet certain criteria

  1. In Team Explorer, expand the team project in which you want to search, right-click Work Items, and click Search.

    The Search for Work Items dialog box appears. By default, the search is performed against the team project from which you invoked the search operation.

  2. If you want to search for specific words or phrases in your work items, perform one or more of the following tasks:

    • In Search terms, type one or more words, separated by whitespace.

    • In Search terms, type one or more phrases, enclosed in quotation marks (for example, “throws an exception”) and separated by whitespace.

    • To find only those work items that contain all the specified terms, in Match, select All Terms.

      All Terms is selected by default.

    • To find those work items that match any of the specified terms, in Match, select Any Terms.

    • To specify the fields that are searched for matches, select or clear the Title, Description, or History check boxes.

    • To specify additional fields that are searched for matches, select the Additional Field 1, Additional Field 2, or Additional Field 3 check boxes and click the field in the list that you want to search.

  3. (Optional) Specify additional criteria to restrict the scope of your search by Project, Area, Iteration, Work item type, State, or by Assigned to.

  4. (Optional) Specify a range of dates for Created Date to restrict search to work items that were created within a specified date range.

  5. (Optional) Specify a range of dates for Changed Date to restrict search to work items that were modified within a specified date range.

  6. If you want to make further modifications to the search that require the query editor, click Edit in Query Editor.

  7. Click OK to perform a search by using the criteria that you specified.

    The search results appear in the Query Results window.

  8. If you want to change the search criteria, you can click in the query results and click Edit Query.

    You can also return to the first step of this procedure. When the Search for Work Items dialog box appears, it retains the criteria from your last search in the current Eclipse session.

See Also

Tasks

Find a Work Item Based on its ID, Title, or Description (Team Explorer Everywhere)

Modify Work Items within a List View (Team Explorer Everywhere)

Other Resources

Finding Bugs, Tasks, and Other Work Items (Team Explorer Everywhere)