Search Fields

There are two search fields in Confluence.

• One on top-right corner of every screen.  This searches all content in all spaces.

• One on top-left in the Left hand pane (where table of content is shown).  This searches all content in the space you are in but only within the tree hierarchy you are in. See example below.

If you are positioned on Page A, the search covers all descendants of Page A (i.e. B1 & its descendants C1, C2, C3  and B2 & its descendants C4 & C5).

If you are positioned on Page B1, the search covers all descendants of Page B1 only. It does not cover B2 or any of B2 descendants.

Tip:

• To ensure you search the whole space, ensure you position yourself at the home page of the space.

• If you want to search the whole space, then it is safer to use search field on top-right corner so you don’t inadvertently cut short your search.

Useful Confluence search syntax

Matched phrase search

Use double quotes to search for content that contains the phrase you want. E.g.  “Management Console”.

Note: Confluence will ignore common words (stop words) such as 'and', 'the', 'or', etc, even if they are included within double quotes.

For example:

• Searching for "cheese one" returns only pages in which 'one' appears as the first word after 'cheese'.
• Searching for "the one" returns all pages containing 'one' because 'the' is a stop word.

Wild card search

You can use one or more wildcard characters in your search.

For example, you could search for http*.atlassian.* to find:  https://www.atlassian.com or http://www.atlassian.jp.

Leading wildcards

Confluence doesn't allow wildcards at the beginning of your search, but you can format your search as a regular expression as a workaround.

For example, you can't search for *hum* or ?hum*, as they begin with a wildcard, but you can search for /.*hum.*/ and find things like hum, human, and inhumane.

AND search

To search for content that contains both the terms 'chalk' and 'cheese', use the operator AND in capital letters:

chalk AND cheese

OR search

To search for content that contains one of the terms, 'chalk' or 'cheese', use the operator OR in capital letters:

chalk OR cheese

NOT search

To search for content that contains 'chalk' but NOT 'cheese', use the operator NOT in capital letters:

chalk NOT cheese

Title search

To search for pages with certain words in the title:

Place cursor in the search field on top-right corner of the screen and press < enter>, screen below will be shown:

• Use the Add a filter option at the bottom left of the page,
• Then choose With title,
• Enter the words you're looking for, in any order, and hit enter.

Note: If a page title has a special character in it (e.g. non alpha numeric characters) then these pages may not be found by Confluence search. Examples of special characters are:      % & ? / \ ; “ + : (  )