How do I perform an exact match search?
Asked by Joel Newton:

I am searching our instance of Confluence for the word "Esper" so I search for "Esper" (in quotes).

Many of the results I get are for pages with "esp" but not "Esper". This seems wrong. Can anything be done to exclude these results? Thanks.


Answers:
author: Kian Stack Mumo Systems
body: [@Joel Newton](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/1131344),   

Atlassian's [documentation](https://support.atlassian.com/confluence-cloud/docs/confluence-search-syntax/) on searches indicates that using quotation marks will return exact matches.

If this isn't working properly, perhaps raising a ticket with Atlassian would be appropriate.

comments: author: Joel Newton
body: Thanks. I'll do that.


author: Sander Huijssen
body: 2024


author: MM
body: The year is 2022. I have just read through a ticket that was created in 2009 classing this issue as a bug. It is still a bug as the suggested 'fix' written in the documentation does not work.

In short, there is currently no way to search for an exact match.

comments: author: Joe Bloggs
body: The year is 2023 ...


author: halt9k
body: 2023 and 5/6 ...


author: Ond?ej Bene?
body: 2023 and Mariah Carey can already be heard on radio stations


author: Joe Bloggs
body: [@Ond?ej Bene?](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/5371113) that's only too funny Ondra :)


author: Kris Boulez
body: December 2023, the average search engine on the internet is old enough to drink alcohol, drive a car, ... (and does exact matching pretty much since day one).

Here we have a (mature ?) tool which still doesn't do exact matching, very very sad


author: Dmytro Solovei
body: It's July 2024


author: Valente Vidal
body: 2023 this still doesn't work , come on this is basic functionality


author: Andy Folland
body: My $0.02 here.  
Having just wasted half an hour trying to use the alleged "Search for an exact match" - my question then - why doesn't use of the double quotes actually do that? (i.e. search for an exact match).  

As an example, searching for "intentionally" includes pages with "intentional".  
That is clearly NOT an exact match then, is it?  

I'm amazed at myself for managing to type this in without any swearing.

comments: author: Nikolay Nenkov
body: yes, searching for a strings is amazingly hard :D


author: Lucy Minato
body: [@Joel Newton](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/1131344) good luck with your exact match searching, it's been a problem in Confluence for a while for a few of us. Here's some reading for you:

* <https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Confluence-discussions/Search-like-a-pro-with-the-new-advanced-search-experience/td-p/1183423>
* <https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-69222>

:-)


author: Andy Folland
body: Come on Atlassian folks - surely it's high time you sorted this out.


author: Robin Green
body: The best way to search for an exact match in Confluence is to download all your Confluence documentation and move it to a different Wiki provider that provides decent usability features. Since Atlassian is notorious for not fixing basic bugs and providing basic functionality that people have been asking for for years (or decades) this approach works best.


author: Daniel B?guelin
body: Why ist this question marked "Solved" when it actually isn't ?

Exact search is not working.


author: Andy Folland
body: [@atlassian](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/62094): come on folks, time to get a grip here.


author: Vaglienty_ Cheri
body: The year is 2024 and while this post is marked solved, that does not appear to be the case.

Example, I searched for word touches (we have a report that records the number of times a User has to touch a file to make specific changes). This yielded 1456 results. I changed the search to add quotes "touches" and this narrowed down the results to145 results. A I am scrolling I notice the word touch is highlighted., I click for full details, do a CTRL + F and the word touches is nowhere to be found. I read through the whole document to confirm the word touches does not exist.

Also, if you search for multiple words, that doesn't work either. Seach for "score summary" get results for score summary, score and summary.

I've been using Confluence sine 2022 and this search has never properly worked. Maybe it's me? Am I doing something wrong???

The Atlassian documentation below and it clearly does not work like this.   
<https://support.atlassian.com/confluence-cloud/docs/confluence-search-syntax/>

comments: author: Andy Folland
body: \>\> Am I doing something wrong???  
I don't think so. As you say, in that Confluence article what's described under "Search for an exact match" simply does not work.  

There is some reference here to "Lucene tokenisation" - whatever the hell that means. I suspect it is this that leads to the seemingly broken behaviour. TBH I'm not even sure that's true. There's another reply in here from Warwick Shaw that explains the concept of "stop words". But even that does not explain the search failures I've seen.  

In fact, I've kind of given up hope of this ever being resolved now. As per GM' post, I am also so ready to walk away from this product....


author: Warwick Shaw
body: Instead of "Social Security Number" (which doesn't work)  
Try "Social\\ Security\\ Number" (backslash the spaces)  

<br />

If a phrase contains stop words like  
Adobe Sign Options for Authenticating Signers ("for" is the stop word)  

This won't work  
"Adobe\\ Sign\\ Options\\ for\\ Authenticating\\ Signers"  

Instead try  
"Adobe\\ Sign\\ Options" "Authenticating\\ Signers" (remove the stop and quote)


author: GM
body: UGH. yet another example of Atlassian ignoring a serious deficiency... I am so ready to leave this product behind.


author: Kevin Ryan
body: Throwing your customers under the bus again, Atlassian, aren't you? A verbatim search option is critical to reducing overpoweringly cluttered search results --- a major complaint about Confluence at my company. I don't expect you will ever take your blinders off, though.


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