Confluence Search Fields

This page gives an overview of the Apache Lucene search fields used in Confluence.

Filter with CQL

Before you dive into learning more about Lucene fields, you may want to learn about the powerful search filtering offered by Confluence Query Language (CQL).

What's CQL, and how do I use it?

CQL (Confluence Query Language) is a query language developed for Confluence, which you can use in some macros and the Confluence search. Confluence search and CQL-powered macros allow you to add filters to build up a search query, adding as many filters as you need to narrow down the search results.

Use the Add a filter link to add more filters to your query.

Use AND, OR, and NOT operators

For an OR search, specify multiple values in the same field.
So to show pages with 'label-a', 'label-b' or both you'd put 'label-a' and 'label-b' in the same Label field, like this:
For an AND search, add more than one filter and specify a single value in each.
To show only pages with label-a and label-b you'd put 'label-a' in one label field, then add a second Label field to the macro, and put 'label-b' in the second one, like this:

Put simply, OR values are entered in the same filter, AND values are entered in different filter.
Only some filters support AND. If the filter doesn't support the AND operator, you won't be able to add that filter more than once.
For a NOT search, enter a minus sign (-) before the label. This'll exclude everything with that label.

You can use the following CQL filters to build your query:

Filter	Description	Operators
Label*	Include pages, blog posts or attachments with these labels.	OR (multiple values in the same filter) AND (multiple Label filters)
With ancestor	Include pages that are children of this page. This allows you to restrict the macro to a single page tree.	OR (multiple values in the same filter)
Contributor**	Include pages or blog posts that were created or edited by these people.	OR (multiple values in the same filter)
Creator	Include items created by these people.	OR (multiple values in the same filter)
Mentioning user	Include pages and blog posts that @mention these people.	OR (multiple values in the same filter)
With parent	Include only direct children of this page (further sub-pages won't be included)	EQUALS (one page only)
In space**	Include items from these spaces.	OR (multiple values in the same filter)
Including text**	Include items that contain this text.	CONTAINS (single word or phrase)
With title	Include items that contain this text in the title.	CONTAINS (single word or phrase)
Of type**	Include only pages, blogs or attachments.	OR (multiple values in the same filter)

* This field is required in CQL-powered macros.

** You can add these filters in CQL-powered macros but in search they're part of the standard search filters, so they don't appear in the Add a filter menu.

Searching for content in specific fields

Confluence data is stored in fields which can be specified in the search. To search a specific field, type the name of the field followed by a colon ':' and then the term you are looking for.

Preliminary examples:

title:"Some Title"

labelText:chalk

The field specification applies only to the term directly preceding the colon. For example, the query below will look for "Some" in the title field and will search for "Heading" in the default fields.

title:Some Heading