The search box at the top right of your Confluence screen allows you to search Confluence wherever you happen to be in the site. It offers you a quick navigation aid as well as a full site search. You can also search Confluence directly from your browser's search box.
Screenshot: The search box at the top right of a Confluence screen
On this page:
- Searching Confluence from your Browser's Search Box
- Using the Quick Navigation Aid
- Performing a Full Search
- Viewing Attached Office Documents
- Accepting 'Did you mean' Suggestions from Confluence
- Filtering your Search Results
- Advanced Search Syntax
- Browsing Related Labels
- Searching the Content of Attachments
Searching Confluence from your Browser's Search Box
If you are using Firefox or Internet Explorer 7 or later, you can add add your Confluence site as a search provider, via the dropdown menu next to the browser's search box.
The example below shows the 'Extranet' Confluence site offered for inclusion as a search engine in the browser's search box.
Screenshot: Adding your Confluence site to your browser's search box
 | OpenSearch Confluence supports the autodiscovery part of the OpenSearch standard, by supplying an OpenSearch description document. This is an XML file that describes the web interface provided by Confluence's search function. Any client applications that support OpenSearch will be able to add Confluence to their list of search engines. Your Confluence Administrator can enable or disable the Open Search feature via the Confluence Administration Console. |
Using the Quick Navigation Aid
The quick navigation aid automatically offers a dropdown list of pages and other items, matched by title to your search query. You can select one of the offered items or ignore them altogether.
To use the quick navigation aid,
- Start typing your query into the search box located at the top right-hand corner of every screen. Confluence matches titles as you type, showing a quickly-adjusting dropdown list of pages, news items, personal profiles, attachments and so on.
Press the Enter key if you want to bypass the quick navigation aid and perform a full search, as described below. - To see the space to which an item belongs, let your mouse pointer hover over the item in the dropdown list.
- Use the up- and down-arrows on your keyboard to move up and down the list of matching titles and select an item.
- Press the Enter key to open the selected item.
- If you do not find what you are looking for, select the 'Search for' option at the bottom of the list and press the Enter key to do a full search. This has the same effect as pressing Enter immediately after typing your search query. The full search is described below.
Screenshot: The quick navigation aid showing titles matching the query 'con'
Here is more information about how the quick navigation feature works:
- Confluence will truncate any titles that are too long to be displayed.
- If a title is too long to fit the box, hover your cursor over the title to see the full text.
- The matching items are grouped by content type so that you can quickly find the type you want. Confluence shows a maximum of 6 pages and/or news items, 2 attachments, 3 people and 2 spaces. If no matches are found in a particular category, then that category does not appear in the list.
- Items are ordered with the most recent updates first.
- When the matching item is a person's name, their profile picture appears next to their name in the list.
- The part of the title that is matched by the search query is highlighted in bold text.
Your Confluence Administrator can enable or disable the quick navigation feature via the Confluence Administration Console.
Performing a Full Search
When you perform a full search, Confluence will search all content in all spaces (global and personal), mail, personal profiles, attachments and the space description. The results will appear on a new screen.
To use the full search,
- Type your query into the search box located at the top right-hand corner of every screen (or type it into the text box at the top of the Search screen).
- Press the Enter key. (This means that you will ignore the dropdown list of titles offered by Confluence's quick navigation aid, described above.)
- The Search screen appears, as shown below. If any Confluence pages or items match your search query, the Search screen shows a list of the matching items.
- Click an item's title to open the Confluence page or other item.
Screenshot : Results of searching for 'confluence'
On the left of the screen you will see a text block for each item that matched the search criteria, with the following information for each item:
- An icon representing the content type (user profile, space, page, news item, etc). See Confluence Icons.
- The title or name of the content item.
- For attachments: The size and type of file, with a link to download or view the attachment where relevant. See information on viewing Office attachments below.
- The most relevant few lines of content from within the item. Any words that match your search query are highlighted within the content.
- For personal profile items: The email address.
- The space to which the item belongs, displayed on the last line of the item's text block.
- The date when the content item was last modified.
You will see only search results which you have permission to view.
On the right of the screen are further options which allow you to tailor or filter your search results. See below.
Viewing Attached Office Documents
When the search results include an attached Office document, you will see a 'View' link as shown in the screen snippet below.
Screenshot : Search results include an attached Office document with 'View' link
Click the 'View' link to view the content of the Office document within Confluence. If you have an Office application installed, you will also be able to launch your Office editor from within Confluence. See Displaying Office Files in Confluence and Working with the Office Connector.
Accepting 'Did you mean' Suggestions from Confluence
When you perform a full Confluence search, as described above, Confluence may offer you an alternative spelling of your search query. The alternative spelling will appear next to the words 'Did you mean', as shown in the example below.
To accept an alternative spelling suggestion,
- Type your query into the search box.
- Press the Enter key.
- Confluence will analyse the wiki content, to determine whether an alternative spelling of your search query occurs more often in the wiki content. If this is the case, the words 'Did you mean' will appear on the screen, along with an alternative spelling for your search query.
- If you want to try the alternative spelling, click the word showing the suggested spelling. In the example below, you would click the word 'confluence'.
Screenshot : The Search screen with 'Did you mean' offering a corrected spelling
Here is more information about how the 'Did you mean' feature works:
- Confluence uses both a dictionary (bundled with Confluence) and words mined from the content on your system to work out the best alternative spellings of your search terms. Practically, this means that Confluence can provide spelling corrections for specialised jargon that may not appear in a standard dictionary. In general, when deciding between alternative spellings, Confluence will favour words that appear more often in your content.
- In some cases, the 'Did you mean' suggestion may appear even when there are Confluence pages, etc, which match your search query. In other cases, there will be no items which match your search criteria. In both cases, Confluence will offer a 'Did you mean' suggestion if there is a word which will help you find more relevant content.
- The 'Did you mean' feature may offer more than one suggestion.
- The 'Did you mean' suggestion may even offer an incorrect spelling. This would happen if the incorrect spelling occurs many times within your Confluence site. This is intentional, because the aim of the 'Did you mean' feature is to help you find content, not to correct your spelling.
Your Confluence Administrator can enable or disable the 'Did you mean' feature via the Confluence Administration Console.
Filtering your Search Results
The Search screen, pictured above, appears when you do your first search. By default, Confluence will search all content across your Confluence site, including all spaces, mail archives, attachments and all other content types.
On the right of the screen are options which allow you to tailor or filter the search results.
Screenshot : Filtering your search results
Enter your filter criteria as described below, then click the 'Filter' button.
- Where — Restrict your search results to a particular space, or to your favourite spaces, global spaces or personal spaces.
- What — Restrict your search results to a particular content type (pages, news items, mail, etc).
- When — Restrict your search results to content modified within a particular period of time (today, yesterday, within the last week or within the last month).
- Who — Restrict your search results to content last modified by a particular user. You can start typing the person's username or part of their name into the text box as follows:
- Type the username (e.g. 'jsmith').
- Or start typing the person's first name (e.g. 'john')
- Or their last name (e.g. 'smith').
- Or another part of their name, such as a middle name.
Confluence will offer you a list of possible matches. Use your mouse to select the person you want, then press the Enter key to filter the search results.
Screenshot : Filtering your search results by user
More information about the user-matching filter: - The user-matching filter is not case sensitive. You can enter upper or lower case letters and will receive the same results.
- When looking for users to match the name you entered, Confluence divides a person's name into logical units corresponding to first name, middle name (one or more) and last name. It matches the letters of each unit in the name you entered against the letters of each unit in the user directory. For example, you can enter 'jo sm' to look for John Smith. The search is triggered after you have entered at least two letters.
- For each part of the name, you need to enter at least two letters. For example, if you enter just 'john s', the filter will look for users called 'john' and will ignore the 's'. Similarly, if you enter 'j smith' you will see everyone with the name 'smith' even if their first name does not start with a 'j'.
- You are not forced to use the auto-complete list. You can just type 'jsmith' or 'jo sm' and filter on that without choosing a match from the dropdown list. Confluence will warn you if there is more than one user corresponding to the name you have entered.
Click 'Clear Filter' if you want to remove all your filters and perform the same search again but without the filter.
Advanced Search Syntax
See Confluence Search Syntax for more ways to refine the text you enter into the search box.
Additionally, see Confluence Search Fields for special parameters you can use in the search box to search on various metadata.
Browsing Related Labels
Also on the right of the Search screen, Confluence will offer a list of labels which are related to your search query. See the screenshot above.
You can click a label to see all pages and news items tagged with that label. See Navigating Pages by Label.
Searching the Content of Attachments
When you search Confluence, by default the search will include the content of the following types of attachments:
- Word
- Text
- PowerPoint
- Excel
- HTML
To search the content of other attachment types, you will need to use an attachment content extractor plugin. For more information, take a look at the following:
- Existing extractor plugins which you can install on your Confluence site.
- Guidelines on developing your own attachment content extractor plugin.
RELATED TOPICS
Confluence Search Syntax
Confluence Search Fields
Ranking of Search Results
Text Tokenisation and Filtering
Search Macro
Livesearch Macro
Pagetree Macro (includes an optional search box)
Viewing labelled pages
Searching the People Directory
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Comments (26)
Mar 30, 2009
Anonymous says:
Only if you add your Confluence site to your browser's search box while on the D...Only if you add your Confluence site to your browser's search box while on the Dashboard will the search actually work. Adding it (to FF) while in a Space will give the following error when you use it to search:
"Address Not Found
wiki.wwf.org.audosearchsite.action could not be found. Please check the name and try again."
Mar 30, 2009
Azwandi Mohd Aris [Atlassian] says:
Can you please ensure that the server base URL is correct? Can you replicate thi...Can you please ensure that the server base URL is correct? Can you replicate this problem on this documentation site (dashboard, space)?
Apr 14, 2009
Anonymous says:
This is very usefull ! Thinks! AskaThis is very usefull !
Thinks!
Aska
Jun 03, 2009
Anh Bui says:
Does anyone know if you can change the 'No results found' message? I would like...Does anyone know if you can change the 'No results found' message?
I would like to change this message to link back to our intranet site but am not sure if this possible. \\\
Any ideas?
Jun 23, 2009
Sashidaran Jayaraman [Atlassian] says:
Hi Anh Bui, Yes, you can. You need to edit the vmd file responsible for the par...Hi Anh Bui,
Yes, you can. You need to edit the vmd file responsible for the particular page.
In your case, this will be /confluence/decorators/components/search-results.vmd.
Find for the following code, it will be almost at the bottom of the file:
$action.getText("search.no.results.found", ["<strong>${generalUtil.htmlEncode($queryString)}</strong>"]) <ul> <li>$action.getText("search.tip.general")</li> <li>$action.getText("search.tip.restrictions")</li> </ul>And include one line that points to your intranet back. For example, this will point you back to your dashboard:
$action.getText("search.no.results.found", ["<strong>${generalUtil.htmlEncode($queryString)}</strong>"]) <ul> <li>$action.getText("search.tip.general")</li> <li>$action.getText("search.tip.restrictions")</li> <li><a href="dashboard.action">Click here</a> for the dashboard.</li> <!--this is added--> </ul>Hope this helps.
Cheers
JSashi
Jul 16, 2009
Adam Radcliffe says:
Is it possible to modify the search function to allow searching of multiple spac...Is it possible to modify the search function to allow searching of multiple spaces? So, for example, changing from a drop-down list where only one space can be selected (producing a &where=SPACE statement in the query string) to a checkbox that would allow the user to select more than one?
Aug 10
Sashidaran Jayaraman [Atlassian] says:
Hi Adam, I am afraid this is not currently possible. However, I have found simi...Hi Adam,
I am afraid this is not currently possible. However, I have found similar feature requests that highlight your requirement:
Please add yourself as a watcher, vote for this feature and add your own comments to this feature request. For further details on how we include new features and improvements, you might want to read this page.
Cheers
JSashi
Aug 11
Anonymous says:
Hi, How to set the Search box to be case-non-sensitive. For example when I sea...Hi,
How to set the Search box to be case-non-sensitive.
For example when I search for "mypage" only pages containing "mypage", "Mypage" are returned but not pages containing "MyPage" or or "MYPAGE".
Thanks.
Regards.
SB
Aug 18
Zed Yap [Atlassian] says:
Hi, How to set the Search box to be case-non-sensitive. For example when I sea...Hi,
As far as I know, the feature requested is not available yet. However, you might want to raise a feature request in JIRA:
Hope that helps.
Best rgds,
Zed
Sep 25
Jonny Lyse says:
Hi there, look at my screenshot in the bottom of the comment (URL: http://img201...Hi there, look at my screenshot in the bottom of the comment (URL: http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/7616/searchtrouble.jpg)
As you can see, I have created a document called "Bogus Bananas".
For some reason the "normal" search is unable to find the page, while the "live search" finds it instantly!
If I search for "Bogus Banan" i also get 0 hits. But hold on - if I search for "Bogus Banana" (without the "s" in the end) it suddenly finds the page.
How can i solve this problem?
Sep 27
Mark Hrynczak [Atlassian] says:
The Quick Nav search matches to the page title because it is autocompleting the ...The Quick Nav search matches to the page title because it is autocompleting the string you have typed.
The "normal" search is trying to find an exact match, which is why it doesn't find the page (as "ba" and "bananas" are two different words). To perform a wild card search, you need to use the * symbol. That is, searching for the string "bogus ba*" will match to the page title.
See here for more information on search syntax.
Sep 28
Jonny Lyse says:
The Quick Nav search matches to the page title because it is autocompleting the...Thanks for clearing that up!
Oct 09
Jonny Lyse says:
Is there a way to include "Breadcrump" in the search results? That is - showing ...Is there a way to include "Breadcrump" in the search results?
That is - showing every parent page of the page which returned the result?
It only shows the Spaces atm - is there a file I could edit to include Breadcrump instead of the spacename?
Or is this perhaps a feature request?
Oct 19
Zed Yap [Atlassian] says:
Hi Jonny, Is there a way to include "Breadcrump" in the search results? That ...Hi Jonny,
As far as I know, the feature requested is not available yet. However, I found a feature request in JIRA:
Please add your comments to the discussion, vote on it and add yourself as a watcher for future updates. Also, please bear in mind the following document on how we schedule features for inclusion in our products: Implementation of New Features and Improvements.
Hope that helps.
Best rgds,
Zed
Oct 27
Anonymous says:
Is it possible to limit the search box (in the top right of every page) to searc...Is it possible to limit the search box (in the top right of every page) to search only my space by default? Or will people need to always do an advanced search and limit it manually?
Nov 04
Jack Low [Atlassian] says:
Hi, The 'search by space' is not available in Confluence yet. Atlassian has an e...Hi,
The 'search by space' is not available in Confluence yet. Atlassian has an existing feature request on this:
Please feel free to cast your vote, share your comment over there, and add yourself as a watcher for future update. Please also take note on how we implement new features and improvements.
Cheers,
Dec 01
Jonas Lindström says:
Hi! Is it possible to change the number of results displayed per page? The ...Hi!
Is it possible to change the number of results displayed per page? The default is 10 results per page, but 20 would be more useful for our purposes. I can't find a setting for this nor any discussion for this in the documentation.
Thanks for your help!
Dec 01
Sashidaran Jayaraman [Atlassian] says:
Hi Jonas, I am afraid that this is not currently possible. However, I have foun...Hi Jonas,
I am afraid that this is not currently possible. However, I have found a similar feature request. Please add yourself as a watcher, vote for this feature and add your own comments to this feature request. For further details on how we include new features and improvements, you might want to read this page
Hope that helps.
Cheers
JSashi
Dec 16
Anonymous says:
Hi, If I have secured space, let's say HR or Legal which I do not want to have ...Hi,
If I have secured space, let's say HR or Legal which I do not want to have access to general audiance which I think I can set up. But when people try to search this secured content, would that appear in their search results?
Thanks,
Nick
Dec 16
Mark Hrynczak [Atlassian] says:
No - if a user does not have 'View' permission for a space, then content from th...No - if a user does not have 'View' permission for a space, then content from that space will not appear in search results for that user.
Cheers,
Mark
Jan 07
Anonymous says:
We have a lot of spaces (One space for each released version of our product). By...We have a lot of spaces (One space for each released version of our product). By using "Favorite Spaces" then one can limit the search. But how can one make the "Favorite Spaces" the default search location ?
Jan 28
Azwandi Mohd Aris [Atlassian] says:
You can append a URL parameter "where=conf_favorites" to every request for the s...You can append a URL parameter "where=conf_favorites" to every request for the search results. For instance:
To make it appended automatically, you can probably edit the templates that render the search fields. One place that I can think of is in <confluence-install>/confluence/template/includes/macros.vm:
yesterday at 09:12:57
Lumina Purandare says:
Does confluence support a cached page view for search result just like google se...Does confluence support a cached page view for search result just like google search results. For e.g: When one searches in google, in each search result, google provides a "Cached" link (if it has a snapshot of that page in cache). When user selects the cache link to view the details of the search result, it highlights all the search words in the page. Is this possible in a search result displayed in Confluence, where when user views the details page returned in a search result, the page displays with the search words highlighted
Thank you
Lumina
yesterday at 09:29:24
Jack Low [Atlassian] says:
Hi Lumina, Unfortunately, the feature that you are after is not available now. C...Hi Lumina,
Unfortunately, the feature that you are after is not available now. Currently, Confluence only can highlight the search keyword in the search result title and description. We do have a similar feature request being tracked here:
Please feel free to share your comment, vote on it, and add yourself as a watcher for future update.
Thanks & regards,
Jack
yesterday at 10:44:01
Lumina Purandare says:
Thanks Jack, I will add myself as a watcher on the request. Have a great day Re...Thanks Jack, I will add myself as a watcher on the request. Have a great day
Regards
Lumina
about 16 hours ago
Jack Low [Atlassian] says:
Hi Lumina, You are welcome. Please feel free to ask again if you need further as...Hi Lumina,
You are welcome. Please feel free to ask again if you need further assistant.
Cheers,
Jack
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