Overview

Searching for docs in Confluence can be a bit tricky, but once you understand how it works, you should be able to find anything you need. This guide explains the tools available for the two ways to search in Confluence:

Space Search - Search for documents by title in the current space
Global Search - Search for any content across all spaces

This guide also covers search syntax for making advanced queries.

Space Search

The simplest way to search in Confluence is to search for a page title within a single space. To do this type of search, use the Search by title search bar on the left side of the page, right above the file tree:

The Space Search useful if you are looking for a specific document in the space you are currently browsing. For example, let’s say we are in the Universal Controller 7.7 space, and we want to search for docs about Workflows in this space. Searching for “workflow” returns these results:

Notice that this search bar only matches titles of docs, not keywords within the docs. If you want to search for content besides titles, use the Global Search.

Search Syntax

Confluence’s search algorithm works in an unintuitive way. When you give a search query with multiple terms, Confluence will return results matching any of the terms, rather than matching all of the terms. This means a more detailed query will return more results, rather than narrowing down the results to a smaller set. For example, if we search for “workflow task”, we don’t get results that contain both “workflow” and “task”, we get results that contain “workflow” or “task”:

This can be frustrating, because searching for an exact document title will often yield many irrelevant results that happen to contain one of the words in your query. To solve this problem, we need to utilize advanced search syntax.

Confluence supports a variety of special words and symbols when making advanced queries, such as quotes, wildcards, and Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT). See Confluence’s Search Syntax doc for a full guide on advanced search queries.

Luckily, you do not have to be an expert on search syntax to put together a good query. Most of the time, it is sufficient to use quotes to find an exact phrase. See how we can force Confluence to find titles matching “workflow task”, rather than splitting the search into separate “workflow” and “task” and queries:

Global Search

If you want to search for content beyond page titles of the space you are currently in, use the search bar at the top of the page:

We call this the “Global Search” because it searches across every space (that you have access to). This is useful if you want to cast a wide net to find every possible result on a search term. For example, searching for “windows” returns these search results:

Notice that the results come from a variety of spaces. You will also find that Confluence tends to prefer documents you have recently viewed, regardless of how closely the title matches the search term. There are often so many results that it can be difficult to find exactly what you’re looking for, but there are some strategies you can use to get more helpful results.

Advanced Search

The Advanced search is much more effective than the basic Global Search, and not much harder to use, so we recommend skipping straight here. To use the Advanced search, click the “Advanced search” button at the bottom of the search popup:

This will take you to a separate page where you can add various filters to your search, such as limiting your search by space, time last edited, and more. The filters are fairly self-explanatory, but we will give a few examples to show how they work.

Filter Examples

Going back to our first search term, “windows,” let’s say we only want results from the UC 7.7 and UA 7.7 spaces. We can use the Space filter to narrow down our search:

Note

You may need to start typing the name of a space to find results.

Let’s say we know even more about where we want to look. Maybe we only want information about “windows” under the Tasks folder in the Universal Controller docs. Using the Content under filter, we can narrow our search:

This is more useful. Even with a generic term like “windows,” we can narrow our search down to something very specific. If you know enough details about what you’re looking for, filters are a great way to find what you need.

Even if you do not know what space or section of the docs you’re looking for, you can still put together an effective query by using advanced search syntax. For example, let’s say we want to find information on how to view task instance details. Maybe we do not know the exact title of the document we are looking for, but we think the words “task instance” will be paired with the word “view” or “details” in some way:

All the results seem to have some relevant information (especially the first result!) so this search was a success. Of course, search syntax can also be used in conjunction with filters to really narrow things down. With these tools, you should be able to find anything you need.