SharePoint Search Thesaurus TSenu.xml

How do I update SharePoint 2010 or 2007 to search for more than term at a time?  What?

In my example, every time I search for Pizza, I also want to see Taco search results.  This is a two way street.  Search for Taco, I also see Pizza results.

Key word here is synonyms.  And we have two options to play with. Replacement and Expansion Sets.  Replacement = user searches for “top secret” and they see results for “HR company policy”, Replacement allows you to replace search strings with other search strings.  Expansion Sets = user searches for “Taco”, and they get results for Taco, Pizza, Fruit, Cookie…. Expansion allows you to add more words to your searched text.

This KB article goes into greater detail: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/289652

Another helpful link: http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/36203/How-to-Configure-SharePoint-Treasure-Synonym-In-MO.aspx

First I created a Document Library and uploaded two files, Pizza and Taco.

Search for Pizza, and the only think I see are Pizza results.

After updating the TSenu.xml file located at:

Drive:\Program Files\Microsoft Office Servers\12.0\Data\Applications\[SSP Admin Site GUID]\Config\tsneu.xml

to look like this:

<XML ID="Microsoft Search Thesaurus">
<thesaurus xmlns="x-schema:tsSchema.xml">
<diacritics_sensitive>0</diacritics_sensitive>
<expansion>
<sub>Taco</sub>
<sub>Pizza</sub>
</expansion>
</thesaurus>
</XML>

Then do a quick command update:
NET Stop oSearch
NET Start oSearch

I now see results for Pizza and Taco

No need to reboot or do an IISreset.

If you update the xml file and do the NET Stop/Start, but are not seeing expected results.  Try searching for TSenu.xml on your server to make sure you are updating the correct file.

As you can see here, there is more than one XML file on a server.

Note from the KB article:

(For example, the English (United States) version of the thesaurus is TSenu.xml.

If you working in other languages make sure you update the correct XML file.