How to search within new collections

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How to search within new collections

T 0

Previous collections had internal searchability. Horrible new Collections (many bad points) seem to search ONLY on the web with Bing. This totally destroys the usefulness of my collections. I am not "searching for new ideas and related products" I WAS using it as a serious research tool. Now totally destroyed in functionality. Not happy.

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AceRobertT 8,750 Independent Advisor

Hello T. The new Microsoft Edge Collections have diminished a key feature that made it a viable option for serious researchers internal search capability. Previously users could search their collection and find if their specific notes, links, and pages resided in their collected items. With the new Collections, users are left with Bing search that is web-based instead of part of their own content. And it has been disappointing for users to find that most of Collections is web-based and the internal search that seems very reasonable to expect is missing. Many users see that the old Collections was more of a way to organize research than a shopping, or discovery experience.

Sadly, there is no internal search function and currently, no known workaround to search content within your saved collections. You can create a new collection, open all links saved in the collection, and rename cards, but the current version doesn't allow for text-based searching of saved collection items.

Best regards,

T 0 Reputation points

2025-08-12T05:23:59.6566667+00:00

Yes, thank you for the reply. I did copy/paste the lists across to a MindManager map (LOCALLY stored - I also have issues with OneDrive cloud storage being the "master" while I and my computer are its "clients" using secondary copies, and even worse, being unable to use AUTOSAVE in Word, as that requires OneDrive to be accepted as the master -- again, not on). The MindManager map is tedious to have to maintain, but at least it's local, searchable and safe. My Collections were lost a while ago and never recovered. I was using Collections to save sites for serious legal research, with hundreds of sites collected and needing to be searchable. It's truly infuriating to be dumbed down to this level. For several months MS kept trying to migrate my collections but kept failing (no way to tell it to stop, I had to just sit there while it tried and tried). Sadly, miraculously, it managed to get its own way this week. (Hence my apparent lateness in discovering just how bad the "improved" Collections function is. Again, thanks for the reply. Sorry to vent in return. :)

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