Can Search be performed on a calculated field in advanced search? (SP2007)

Question

I have yet to find a definitive answer to this question. Right now this does not work for me in sharepoint 2007 and the only common characteristic I can find for the fields is that they are calculated fields.

A full crawl has been performed and the calculated fields show up. Managed properties have been added and the advanced search web parts properly modified to allow search on the properties. All other (non-calculated) fields added to the managed properties and search work fine.

The Calculated fields are text fields with the formula "=LEFT([field name],2)". The reference field is a choice field.

Anyone? If search on calculated fields is not supported, I really just need to get back to the user to say "Nope, it can't be done."

Answer 1

So this won't be 100% helpful, but my view is that is can be searched, at least, it can be searched in FAST4SharePoint.

In the FFDDumper log (a FAST4SharePoint tool) I get the following row (my calc column is [Title] & "HIHI"

50 00130329-0000-0130-C000-000000131346:ows_CalCol:31 s48 string;#COMPETETIVE ANALYSIS HIHI

This content is first crawled by the SharePoint crawler and then processed by FAST. If SharePoint didn't crawl it then FAST wouldn't see it. I don't have standard SharePoint search setup, but logically the content should be searchable as it's not highly complex.

Do me a favour and try searching for "string;#". The "string;#" is not there for any of my other text field and is only visible in my calculated column. It might be that SharePoint isn't actually smart enough to deal with this and doing an exact match based on this might yield a search result.

Whether or not this is usable for your client is another question entirely.