can I search for pages that do not have a certain label?

[James Strangeway]

This question is in reference to Atlassian Documentation: Confluence Search Syntax

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[Stephen Deutsch · Accepted solution]

I tested this search:

type:page NOT labelText:confluence

and it appeared to return all pages not containing the label "confluence".  I tested on both Cloud and Server.

The only thing you have to be careful about are hyphenated labels (i.e. confluence-doc), because a search will match both "confluence" and "doc".

[James Strangeway]

Thanks!!!!

[RPT Admin]

I'm not aware of any way you can do this. We employ a workaround in my organisation, where all pages must have a default label. You can then use the default label in conjunction with standard search syntax to search for pages which don't have a certain label. 

Sounds complex so here's an example: the default label, applied to all pages, is dfet. You're looking for all pages which do not contain the label superseded. The search syntax is:

labelText:dfet NOT labelText:superseded

Because dfet is on every page, this will return a list of all pages which do not contain the label superseded. 

If anyone has a better solution which works on Confluence Cloud, please share!

Edit: Stephen Deutsch has a more elegant solution. 

[James Strangeway]

Thank you.

[James Strangeway]

This will work well Alex. Thanks