What fields does Jira use for word search?

Question

When I enter a word to search in Jira, it ends up bringing up a huge list of items and most of them don't have that word or string of words in the Summary.  I have to scroll through sometimes hundreds of entries to find the one I want.  Is there a way to configure the word search for Jira so that it only searches the Summary?

Diana Mitten · Answer

Thank you so much for the JQL suggestion!

Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Answer

All the text based fields essentially.  I'm told it's supposed to prioritise summary and then description, but it searches all text fields and comments too.

You can search just the summary with simple JQL = "summary ~ xyz"