Confluence Docs 3.0 : Searching Confluence This page last changed on Aug 26, 2009 by ggaskell. 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 an Office Document 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 PDF 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 Take me back to Confluence Documentation Home

Document generated by Confluence on Nov 05, 2009 23:36