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The fastest way to find what you are looking for in Confluence is to do a site search. Confluence will search all content, including attachments.

On this page:

Quick Search

The quick search feature allows you to search Confluence wherever you happen to be in the site.

To do a quick search,

Type your query into the quick search box, located at the top right-hand corner of every screen.
Press the Enter key.

By default, Confluence will search all content in all spaces (global and personal), mail, personal profiles and the space description. The results will appear on a new screen.

The screenshot below shows the results of searching for 'confluence'.

Screenshot : Results of searching for 'confluence'

Confluence 2.9 > Space Attachments Directory > quicksearch2.png

On the left of the screen you will see a few lines 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 of the content item.
The space to which it belongs, displayed in brackets after the title.
The most relevant few lines of content from within the item. The search terms are highlighted within the content.
The date when the content item was last modified.
The labels attached to the item.

You will see only search results from spaces 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.

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 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

Confluence 2.9 > Space Attachments Directory > SearchFilter.png

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 created or 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.

In Confluence 2.9, the filter by user is available only for Confluence sites which use the standard out-of-the-box configuration for user management. The user filter is disabled if you are using external user management, such as LDAP. This issue is resolved in Confluence 2.9.1. If you are upgrading from Confluence 2.9 to Confluence 2.9.1, please follow the instructions on enabling contributor filtering.

Clearing your Results and Starting a New Search

Click 'Clear Search' if you want to start a new search, abandoning the search terms and filters you have previously entered.

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 terms. 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 Attachments

By default, Confluence will search the following types of attachments:

Word
Text
PowerPoint
Excel
PDF
HTML

To search other types of attachments, you will need to use an attachment content extractor plugin. For more information, take a look at the following: