I am new to Dynamics and I would like to say the search functionality seems quite limited. I would like to search for specific contacts and organisations but the search seems quite generic. Can I add different data fields to the search and if so how?
I understand we can do wildcard searches, I would like to drill down to search for organisations of a defined organisational type or contacts of a defined contact type.
You are asking about something called "Advanced Find".
You can open Advanced Find by clicking the Funnel icon in top right corner of CRM application.
From there on, you select the main entity you want to look for, and add constraints on fields contained within this entity.
This is a very powerfool tool, and explaining all of it's possibilities would be quite exhausting for a Q&A site like SO, so instead I will drop a link to a guide on using it I found just a second ago:
CRMBook - Advanced Find
Some further reading on Microsoft Docs: link
There are different search options available in Dynamics CRM. The one you are talking about is Global search to span across entities (search box in top navigation bar). Global search uses the Quick find view filters.
Quick find is the small search box available above entity view grids. You can set the filterable fields in quick find view definition.
Another answer talks about Advanced find - the powerful one.
For Excel like filtering capability you can try this custom filter on view columns: Increase your Strategic Effectiveness by Filtering Views in Microsoft Dynamics 365
