Restrict users to search for own documents only

Question

I have a SharePoint document library in which users can create documents.

When users are performing a search, all documents are returned in the search results. I would like to restrict the results to documents created by user itself only.

How can I do this?

Answer 1

This can be achieved by configuring item level permission in Document Library

steps to do this
1) goto Library settings
2) then click on advanced settings and select "Read items that were created by the user" under read access

Answer 2

Why not just give them a view into the library that only shows their documents. This way they can still find other documents and you don't have to do anything to the library or have the user's remember to use a custom search string:

Add a Search Results Web part to a page within your site and define the query as such:

(IsDocument:"True" AND CreatedBy={User.Name})

Then add a search Box Web Part and point to the Search Results Web Part. What will happen is when the page is loaded it will show a list of documents that the user has edited. They can then further refine that list by searching in the search box added.

This solution does not require a change to the library or customizing search itself, though it does require adding some web parts to a page on your site.

Hope it helps,

Dave