Jira Text Search in Custom Fields

Benjamin Slapcoff August 15, 2012

I have a Free Text Field (unlimited text) Custom Field, and I would like to create a filter that displays all issues in which that field has a value.

Is this possible? If I could even just search for a text value in that field, it would be of much use.

My JIRA Version is 3.9.1

4 answers

1 accepted

1 vote
Answer accepted
Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
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August 15, 2012

Well, you can use the search in 3.x to say "text field contains", but it is limited to looking for words or phrases in the text. Go to your filter page, look for your custom field and put a word in there, that will do the basics.

But you can't search for "has a value"

If you upgrade to version 4 or above, you get JQL, where you can say things like "field X is not empty". 3.x does not have JQL.

Benjamin Slapcoff August 15, 2012

My custom field is not on the filter page because it is an "Unlimited text" field.

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
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August 15, 2012

That does not sound correct to me.

I've always been able to search unlimited text fields, and I started using Jira when it was 3.0.3 (actually, 2.7 - my first task was to upgrade, so I didn't really pay a lot of attention to the old system beyond checking all the data upgraded ok)

I'd guess that either

1) your custom field either has a limited context, so you only get offered the search if you have narrowed down the project and/or issue type to ones that have the field in the context

or

2) your custom field does not have a searcher selected - go to cutom fields, find it, hit edit, and look for the searcher field - it may be set to "none", in which case, change it to "free text" and then book a system re-indexing next time you can.

Benjamin Slapcoff August 15, 2012

I feel dumb now! It was limited to a context, but after specifying the project, i needed to click the "refresh search menu" button that popped up. Thanks!

1 vote
Jobin Kuruvilla [Adaptavist]
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August 15, 2012

Juts make sure you have a searcher associated with the filed and you can then search using it in the issue navigator.

See step7 : http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/docs/v3.9/customfields/addcustomfield.html

You can edit extsiting fields to add it if not already selected. You will have to reindex JIRA.

0 votes
Casey Maynard July 10, 2018

I recently discovered that using the ~ option for custom text field seems to produce the search results I need, but only if it is an EXACT match (for the most part)

JQL format = CustomFieldName ~ text.value.100

Example = Timecode ~ REGST.GUDI.112    >>> will find the EXACT match

Note: (Example) Timecode ~ REGST >>> will results in any value that starts with REGST

but (Example) Timecode ~ REGST.GUDI >>> will not find the REGST.GUDI.112

0 votes
Sebastian Krzewinski August 15, 2012

you can use a JIRA Query Language (JQL) for checking if this field is empty or not

e.g. "YOUR_free_text_field" is not EMPTY

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