Search for workspace objects

This article describes how to search for notebooks, queries, dashboards, alerts, files, folders, libraries, jobs, and repos in your Databricks workspace.

It also describes how to search for tables registered in Unity Catalog.

Note

The search behavior described in this section is not supported for non-E2 workspaces. In those workspaces, you can click Search in the sidebar and type a search string in the Search Workspace field. As you type, objects whose name contains the search string are listed. Click a name from the list to open that item in the workspace.

In workspaces that use customer-managed keys for encryption, notebook contents and query contents are not available in search.

Access the search dialog

To search the workspace, do the following:

Click the Search field in the top bar of the Databricks workspace or use the keyboard shortcut Command-P.

Your recent files, notebooks, queries, alerts, and dashboards are listed under Recents, sorted by the last opened date.
Enter your search criteria.

Recent objects in the list are filtered to match your search criteria.
Select an item from the list, or press Enter to display the search dialog.

You can search by text string, by object type, or both. After you type your search criteria and press Enter, the system searches the names of all queries, dashboards, alerts, files, folders, notebooks, libraries, and repos in the workspace that you have access to. If your workspace is enabled for Unity Catalog, the system also searches table names, table comments, column names, and column comments.

When you click an item in the search results, the item automatically opens in the appropriate persona-based environment. For example, when you click a query, it opens in Databricks SQL.

Search by text string

To search for a text string, type the string into the search field and then press Enter. The system searches the names of all objects in the workspace that you have access to. It also searches text in notebook commands, but not in non-notebook files.

You can place quotation marks around your search entry to narrow search results to only documents that contain your exact phrase.

Exact match search supports the following:

Basic quotation marks (for example, "spark.sql(")
Escaped quotation marks (for example, "spark.sql(\"select")

Exact match search doesn’t support the following:

With quotation marks and without quotation marks (for example, "spark.sql" partition)
Multiple quotation marks (for example, "spark.sql" "partition")

Limit search to a specific object type

You can also search for items by type (file, folder, notebooks, libraries, table, or repo). A text string is not required. To limit your search to a specific type of item, click the corresponding tab in the Search dialog. If you leave the text field blank and then press Enter, the system searches for all objects of that type. Click a name from the list to open that item in the workspace. You can also use the dropdown menus to search for items by owner or by the last modified date.

Search tables in Unity Catalog-enabled workspaces

In workspaces enabled for Unity Catalog, you can search for tables registered in Unity Catalog. You can search on table names, table comments, column names, and column comments. You can filter search results by parent catalog and database (schema).

Search results don’t include:

Tables that you don’t have permission to see.

In other words, for a table to appear in your search results, you must have at least the SELECT privilege on that table, the USE SCHEMA privilege on its parent schema, and the USE CATALOG privilege on its parent catalog. Metastore admins have those privileges by default. All other users must be granted those privileges. See Unity Catalog privileges and securable objects.
Tables in the legacy Hive metastore (that is, in the hive_metastore catalog).

To upgrade these tables to Unity Catalog and make them available for search, follow the instructions in Upgrade tables and views to Unity Catalog.