search ONLY WITHIN current PAGE in Confluence (Cloud Version).

Question

Hi, we are new to Confluence. Will have many documents in the knowledge base, some of which could be as much as 100 - 200 pages long. (meaning if printed would be 200 letter size pages). We would very much like to have a Search box at the top of each document, alongside a page of contents. I have seen discussion here re using Page Tree Search, or Live Search to do this. We want a search box where the user enters a search term and the page scrolls to the first instance of the term WITHIN the current page ONLY, much like a ToC entry jumps to that location in the page. Can't have everything in ToC as it would make it enormous..... I did not see any result for those previous queries. Can anyone help please, is this even possible, seems to us a within the page search is a pretty basic need..... If anyone is available who can help with this then please let me know how I can contact you to matbe even discuss it live....

thanks in advance

Kristian Klima_gtcuat · Answer

I agree with @Barbara Szczesniak about the page size... unless :)

I had a lot of pages (back in the day) with data dictionary elements for a mainframe product that were so big Confluence wouldn't save them (had to use page inclusions).

However, those pages served as a dictionary (literally to list 'data dictionary elements' and using CTRL-F was a part of the experience agreed with the user base.

Maybe you could reconsider 'de-chunking' of the pages.

Barbara Szczesniak · Answer

@Brendon Parise I'm with @Kristian Klima regarding searching using the browser's find feature.

With regard to a ToC at the top of the page, you can limit the heading levels to include (https://support.atlassian.com/confluence-cloud/docs/insert-the-table-of-contents-macro/).

As a Technical Writer for 30+ years, I would say that putting the equivalent of 200 physical pages in 1 Confluence page for someone to scroll through does not provide an optimal user experience. If you can't break it up into parent/child pages, I would recommend using the Expand macro (https://support.atlassian.com/confluence-cloud/docs/insert-the-expand-macro/) to make the content easier to navigate. Users can expand the sections they are interested in.

Kristian Klima_gtcuat · Answer

Hi @Brendon Parise and welcome to the community.

I'd suggest using CTRL-F / CMD-F as the easiest option available to anyone with the browser.

Other than that, you can try a Atlassian Marketplace to see if there's an for that.

Just basic search revealed 'kim search and find' which says "Make the important parts of a page searchable for you". And it's free.