I have contacted Atlassian support about this issue today. I add it to this issue to maybe get more attention to the issue.

We are using Confluence Cloud for public user documentation. Our public site have several spaces. We want the quick search box (top right corner of screen) to return search results for the current space only as default. The reason is to avoid confusing the users of the user manual with search results from other spaces of the site, for example the technical documentation.

Yes, I know about the Livesearch macro and have used it, but the users keep using the quick search box and complain that they can't find what they are looking for because they get all kind of results they don't understand. I also know that you can filter the search in advanced search, but the users don't understand that.

A possible workaround for us is to have one site for each space we want to limit search for but this will cost more and  could be an administration nightmare.

Although our use case is for external (anonymous) users, I believe it is valid for any space and users.

Does anyone know how we can get the attention of Atlassian developers? It seems nobody is paying attention to this thread though there is considerable interest and it can't be hard to implement.

+1

This is a weakness in Confluence and has been for 10 years (as pointed out by Mark). My users often complain about this and hence the documentation theme search has been used.

Based on the fact that its been open for so long with no progress just the occasional flurry of interest from the customers (like me) I think we have little chance of seeing this feature. We must remember that Confluence is not an OSS project and governance is solely in the hands of Atlassian and despite customer feed back they clearly don't consider this, like many others, an important enough feature.

It's a pity that Atlassian doesn't seem to be that interested in making seemingly simple fixes like this. There are so many fundamental issues that have been open for many years - like the PDF export issues.

I agree that the ability to control this globally would make a big difference.

Thanks @Melanie & @Bart. We've got to get Atlassian to fix this ASAP. Ten years waiting for this basic functionality is unacceptable. And since it works in other themes it can't be hard to resolve! Easy fix => lots of happy customers. Quick win!

+1
This is a MUST have for our users.

As a national grid operator we use Confluence within several departmens. In this case there are high risks introduced (for grid operations) if the quick search can not be limited to a single space.

This item has been open for ten years! (Created:31/Jan/2006 3:25 PM)

When is someone at Atlassian going to pick this up?

I agree. We need this feature. I can't use the Documentation theme (for other reasons), which means that searches from the toolbar give all sorts of irrelevant results. This makes Confluence look silly to many end users.

I would also like to see this feature implemented ASAP. We have to use the Documentation Theme as a workaround (via Space Admin -> Look and Feel -> Themes -> Documentation Theme -> Configure Theme -> Limit search results to the current space). But these is being phased out.

This is a MUST for our users - otherwise they will get completely irrelevant searches from other spaces.

For us, not having this feature (after the documentation theme is dropped) is a disaster.

(The workaround of creating another search field with a macro is also not a viable solution - otherwise users will see two search fields which is confusing.)