Search for issues using the text field

Search for issues using the text field with the right syntax. You can use the syntax for text fields when searching for recent issues, specific issues (supported fields), and advanced search (when CONTAINS (~) operator is used).

Search syntax for text fields

The below information will help you understand the syntax you can use for searching.

Query terms

A query is broken up into terms and operators. There are two types of terms: single terms (e.g. "hello") and phrases (e.g. "hello dolly"). Query terms in Jira are not case-sensitive. Multiple terms can be combined together with Boolean operators to form a more complex query (see below). If you combine multiple terms without specifying any Boolean operators, they will be joined using AND operators.

Term searches

You can search for multiple-character wildcard searches using * at the end of a word. Multiple character wildcard searches enclosed in quotation marks look for 0 or more characters. For example, to search for Windows, Win95, or WindowsNT, you can use the search:

Exact searches (phrases)

To find exact matches for phrases, for example Jira Software, you need to enclose the whole phrase in quote-marks ("). Otherwise, the search will return all issues that contain both words in no particular order - this would include Jira Software, but also Jira is the best software!.

Examples

Basic search: Find all issues that contain the phrase jira software:

Type "Jira Software" into the search field.

Advanced search: Find all issues that contain the words jira and software, in no particular order.

text ~ "jira software"

Advanced search: Find all issues that contain the exact phrase “Jira Software”.

text ~ "\"jira software\""

Advanced search: Find all issues that contain both the exact phrase "Jira Software" and the exact phrase “hello world”.

text ~ "\"jira software"\" AND text ~ "\"hello world\""

Advanced search: Find all issues that contain the words “Jira” and “Software” in no particular order (a “fuzzy” search), and that also contain the exact phrase “hello world”.

text ~ "jira software" AND text ~ "\"hello world\""

As you can see in the preceding examples, when searching for an exact phrase, the query contains two pairs of quote-marks. The external ones are needed to meet the JQL rules and aren’t related to your search query.

Boolean operators

Boolean operators allow terms to be combined through logic operators. Jira supports AND, "+", OR, NOT and "-" as Boolean operators.

OR

The OR operator is the default conjunction operator. This means that if there is no Boolean operator between two terms, the OR operator is used. The OR operator links two terms, and finds a matching document if either of the terms exist in a document. This is equivalent to a union using sets. The symbol || can be used in place of the word OR.

To search for documents that contain either "atlassian jira" or just "confluence", use the query:

or

AND

The AND operator matches documents where both terms exist anywhere in the text of a single document. This is equivalent to an intersection using sets. The symbol && can be used in place of the word AND.

To search for documents that contain "atlassian jira" and "issue tracking", use the query:

Required term

The "+" or required operator requires that the term after the "+" symbol exists somewhere in a the field of a single document.

To search for documents that must contain "jira" and may contain "atlassian", use the query:

NOT

The NOT operator excludes documents that contain the term after NOT. This is equivalent to a difference using sets. The symbol ! can be used in place of the word NOT.

To search for documents that contain "atlassian jira" but not "japan", use the query:

The NOT operator cannot be used with just one term. For example, the following search will return no results:

Excluded term

The "-" or prohibit operator excludes documents that contain the term after the "-" symbol.

To search for documents that contain "atlassian jira" but not "japan", use the query:

Grouping

You can use parentheses to group clauses to form sub-queries, which can be very helpful if you want to control the boolean logic for a query.

To search for bugs and either atlassian or jira, use the query:

This eliminates any confusion and makes sure that bugs must exist, and either term atlassian or jira may exist.

Reserved words

To keep the search index size and search performance optimal in Jira, the following English reserved words (also known as 'stop words') are ignored from the search index and hence, the Jira text search features:

"a", "an", "abort", "access", "add", "after", "alias", "all", "alter", "and", "any", "are", "as", "asc", "at", "audit", "avg", "be", "before", "begin", "between", "boolean", "break", "but", "by", "byte", "catch", "cf", "char", "character", "check", "checkpoint", "collate", "collation", "column", "commit", "connect", "continue", "count", "create", "current", "date", "decimal", "declare", "decrement", "default", "defaults", "define", "delete", "delimiter", "desc", "difference", "distinct", "divide", "do", "double", "drop", "else", "empty", "encoding", "end", "equals", "escape", "exclusive", "exec", "execute", "exists", "explain", "false", "fetch", "file", "field", "first", "float", "for", "from", "function", "go", "goto", "grant", "greater", "group", "having", "identified", "if", "immediate", "in", "increment", "index", "initial", "inner", "inout", "input", "insert", "int", "integer", "intersect", "intersection", "into", "is", "isempty", "isnull", "it", "join", "last", "left", "less", "like", "limit", "lock", "long", "max", "min", "minus", "mode", "modify", "modulo", "more", "multiply", "next", "no", "noaudit", "not", "notin", "nowait", "null", "number", "object", "of", "on", "option", "or", "order", "outer", "output", "power", "previous", "prior", "privileges", "public", "raise", "raw", "remainder", "rename", "resource", "return", "returns", "revoke", "right", "row", "rowid", "rownum", "rows", "select", "session", "set", "share", "size", "sqrt", "start", "strict", "string", "subtract", "such", "sum", "synonym", "table", "that", "the", "their", "then", "there", "these", "they", "this", "to", "trans", "transaction", "trigger", "true", "uid", "union", "unique", "update", "user", "validate", "values", "view", "was", "when", "whenever", "where", "while", "will", "with"

Be aware that this can sometimes lead to unexpected results. For example, suppose one issue contains the text phrase "VSX will crash" and another issue contains the phrase "VSX will not crash". A text search for "VSX will crash" will return both of these issues. This is because the words will and not are part of the reserved words list.

Word stemming

Since Jira cannot search for issues containing parts of words (see below), word 'stemming' allows you to retrieve issues from a search based on the 'root' (or 'stem') forms of words instead of requiring an exact match with specific forms of these words. The number of issues retrieved from a search based on a stemmed word is typically larger, since any other issues containing words that are stemmed back to the same root will also be retrieved in the search results.

For example, if you search for issues using the query term 'customize' on the Summary field, Jira stems this word to its root form 'custom', and will retrieve all issues whose Summary field also contains any word that can be stemmed back to 'custom'.

The above will retrieve issues whose Summary field contains the following words:

• customized

• customizing

• customs

• customer

• etc.

Stemming modes

For the English language, you can choose the stemming mode by changing the Indexing Language under Settings > System > General Configuration. There are three modes available:

• English - Aggressive Stemming

• English - Moderate Stemming

• English - Minimal Stemming

The difference between them is how each word in your Jira issue is saved in the database, or tokenized. We recommend that you use the moderate or minimal stemming modes. If you enable aggressive stemming, text searches with special characters like /,@, _, ^etc. inside the search word (for example summary ~ "atlassian_jira”) will be tokenized very aggressively. As a result, fewer search results will be returned and the search experience of your users will suffer.