The NetSuite Global Search: Tips and Tricks for Finding Important Information
The faster you can find information, the faster your business can operate.
Information is only helpful if you can find it. That’s why one of NetSuite’s most powerful tools may be its simplest: the global search.
A NetSuite Global Search is a query that uses a keyword to fetch various data from a cloud ERP database. You’ll find the search box anchored at the top center of your NetSuite screen. And you can use the shortcut “Alt+G” to automatically shift your cursor into the search field.
To find necessary data, use keywords between three and 32 characters long. They can contain letters, numbers, dashes, underscores, carets, colons, and percent signs. The system considers any other character as white space.
SuiteDynamics CEO Jake Kleiner demonstrates the NetSuite global search in this video and offers useful tips.
Additional NetSuite Global Search Tips
There are a few more ways to make a NetSuite global search more efficient. For example, you may pair a caret or colon with a search prefix, which uses all or some of the letters in a record type. So, searching “help: reports” yields Help Center material about reports.
Common prefixes include the following.
| Prefix | Record Type |
|---|---|
| Cam | Campaign |
| Cash | Cash Sale |
| Con | Contact |
| Cu | Customer |
| Emp | Employee |
| Est | Estimate |
| Ev | Event |
| Exp | Expense Report |
| Fi | File |
| Invo | Invoice |
| Iss | Issue |
| It | Item |
| Opp | Opportunity |
| Par | Partner |
| Pur | Purchase Order |
| Ph | Phone Call |
| Quo | Quote |
| Sales | Sales Order |
| Ven | Vendor |
| Wo | Work Order |
By default, search results display in view mode. However, you can capitalize the first letter of these prefixes to open a record in edit mode. For instance, “Cu: Capital Bank” opens the editable version of Capital Bank’s customer record. (Note: The prefix doesn’t affect results when you’ve enabled the Show List When Only One Result preference.)
Or surround a search string with quotation marks to limit your search to exact matches. You can also accomplish the same goal by adding a backslash to the end of the keyword. Of course, you don’t need quotation marks or backslashes for numeric searches because they always yield exact matches.
You can add a plus sign to the search to include inactive records. For example, “sales: 1234+” will render all active and inactive sales orders with those numbers.
You may also search for multiple records by adding a capital “OR” between two searches. (Example, cu: Allen OR Jane)
And you can use an underscore to search all records containing certain letters. For instance, “ven: m_n” will search for all vendors with names that feature “m” or “n.”
The NetSuite global search is just one of the ERP’s valuable tools. You can learn more about its features in our NetSuite tutorials or one-on-one training with SuiteDynamics experts. Call us if you want to boost your ERP knowledge.
We pull information from NetSuite material, SuiteDynamics experts, and other reliable sources to compose our blog posts and educational pieces. We ensure they are as accurate as possible at the time of writing. However, software evolves quickly, and although we work to maintain these posts, some details may fall out of date. Contact SuiteDynamics experts for the latest information on NetSuite ERP systems.
