How to edit livesearch/searchbar to include partial searches

[Siem Rovers]

A colleague indicated the following question towards me: 
Would it be possible to update the ‘search’ function to do partial searches? For example, it does not find ‘refres’ but it will find ‘refresh’.

I unfortunately had to inform him of the following:
This is a pre-built functionality with very limited adjustment options, either use * to wildcard something or press enter and get related results. Even the search bar from Confluence itself doesn’t find the page. I will make the comment towards Atlassian to improve this.

Please allow more lenient way of performing partial searches.

[Tomislav Tobijas · Accepted solution]

Hi @Siem Rovers ,

As you've found out, this is fairly limited at the moment. Apart from using wildcards (multi- or single-character, or leading wildcards), there's not much you can do. 🫤

Everyone's focusing effort on AI - meaning Rovo Search and stuff so that might be a direction worth exploring. 

As for some ongoing improvements, you could browse open feature requests here: Confluence Cloud - Open Issues (if we're talking about cloud). I couldn't find anything specific related to your requirement, but you could also, if you have a paid plan/license, reach out to Atlassian Support and explain your case. Their team can create a new suggestion based on what you're looking for.

Cheers,
Tobi