This feels like a pretty basic feature that shouldn't require installing a third-party app like ScriptRunner. Are there any plans to add this to the roadmap?

We could really use a feature like this as well, are there any updates on re-evaluating this?

I changed my name this year and it was a pain to go through and change it across all the Spaces in the work Confluence. It would've been so much easier with a find-and-replace that wasn't page-scoped.

It's a little embarrassing to find instances of my old name that I missed. 

This Won't Fix decision was made almost 6 years ago (which is a lifetime in software years).

Is Atlassian's strategic position still that Confluence is not for tech pubs? Sadly, the data supports that. 

And this conversation with Amrut who posted a comment earlier that they were working on it

27 April 2016 at 15:11
Hello David,

We had kept the project on hold due to other priorities.
If you are interested we will revisit that as a project .
Please do share your coordinates or Skype id for communication.

Awaiting for your reply.

Thanks & Regards

Amrut D Bhonsle
Amrut Software Pvt ltd. Pune
www.amrutsoftware.com

Sent: 26 April 2016 12:18
To: Amrut at E Quest India
Subject: Fwd: Confluence global search and replace - Progress?

Hello
In a comment in this issue:
https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONF-2522
you said that you were working on a global search and replace plugin for Confluence.
When will this product be available?

Thanks
David

Also this conversation: https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/38058080

See the following conversation with Rumpelcoders about further development of their recently released search and replace plugin. This plugin is a good start but we still need something for the end users. https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/38058064

Hi Stephen,
Thank you so much for your post! Above is great help for me and it's about magic

Hey Stephen, it's a great effort, but I think many people will not be willing to use the result until they see version management of sources, issue tracking, release notes,etc. It's a little strange that an issue for Atlassian is now being use to track issues in your contribution. I don't want to put you off, but wouldn't it be better to package this as a plugin and make it available over Atlassian Marketplace? Maybe Atlassian will make you an offer one day!
-David

I fixed the problem, so if you go back to the page and get the new version, it shouldn't cause the problem any longer:
https://streamline.atlassian.net/wiki/display/STRMLN/Search+and+Replace+User+Macro

Sorry about that, please get the new version.

Hi Stephen,

thx for the macro. There just one problem: After replacing, all changed pages are reordered and taken out of their hierarchy. For example: A page that was a sub-page of "Home" now is on the same level as "Home". Maybe I did something wrong but I don't know what...Please help me

very cool, thanks a lot !!!

It's unfortunate that Atlassian could not implement some soft of function themselves, but it is understandable that they would focus on the features that would bring value to the company. However, the only options for global search and replace do not allow you to choose which pages should be changed (either all or nothing), offer limited preview options, and cost money. That's why I decided to release the global search and replace user macro I wrote for free:

https://streamline.atlassian.net/wiki/display/STRMLN/Search+and+Replace+User+Macro

Just embed the macro in a blank page it will be available to use. After searching, you will be able to see a preview of the XML markup code with the changes highlighted. Unfortunately, it only works on a page-by-page basis; I still have not added a function to choose each word/phrase. You can undo fairly easily, as it creates a new edit of the page, so all you have to do is revert to the last version to undo (accessible by clicking the Undo button as well).

Although I believe most of the bugs have been worked out, I cannot promise that it is perfect. However, we have been using it on our Confluence instance without major problems. If you encounter any bugs, please let me know.

Please note that some special characters may need to be HTML-encoded (for example, ü would be ü ).

Hello All,
we have developed a plugin to answer this, additionally

1. it will give a count
2. Searches all page content & Exclude result Space , Page & User names, Macros
3. Individual replace or Replace all
4. Roll back of last action
   we will be releasing it in the market soon , for urgent requirement you can contact me on amrut@equestind.com for more details.

In our environment, this feature is a big deal. As the lone technical writer with 7000 pages to maintain, I don't want to have do a bunch of admin work just to make a text change. Our CTO recently planned to change an internal team and product name that is pervasive throughout multiple spaces. We had to nix the change due to this limitation in Confluence.

Ari's comment shouts loud and clear a message that Atlassian is a propeller head club that does not care for non-propeller head clients. Of course we need a proper step verify search and replace! You are seriously out of reality if you think it is OK to make users individually edit each page to do a global search and replace whan there may be hundreds of pages to change. Atlassian advertised Confluence as a tool for writing manuals. It attracted customers to use it for this purpose. It has not provided an essential basic feature for this. I notice now that manuals are now not listed in the website as a way that Confluence can be used. What about the customers who have been using Confluence in good faith for this advertised purpose, hanging on for this feature to be introduced? Are we supposed to disappear into thin air?

There are work-arounds:
In small scale; user can search all pages with a phrase, then find/replace within each page.
In large scale; off-line edit. Several options identified, e.g. download necessary page sources in storage format ( Confluence CLI ), use the best tool (editors, regex, scripts, ..) for the actual job, upload back to confluence.

I know the latter is not the option for non-techies, but I would be a bit scared to offer global search/replace (with regex options) funtion to such users either (without step/verify, at least). Seems that I'm not alone with this worry. With step/verify, the "small scale" option is quite close.

So for my opinion, there are still more urgent things to fix before this one.

I'm committed to Confluence for another year or so (per agreement with IT), but the PDF and search and replace issues are a big deal for those of us in techcomm. Started looking at other options in preparation. I think Atlassian has made it clear that their focus is on collaboration for agile teams.

Totally agree with this and the PDF comments above and the global search and replace. We use Confluence for technical documentation and we work with our IT department to use CLI plugin for search and replace, but it's serious shame that we have to arrange a meeting and go to such lengths. We also use GREP searches to locate information, but still a manual cleanup.

Perhaps we need to start a twitter campaign? Hello Atlassian, are you listening?

Just sent to CEOs on https://www.atlassian.com/company/contact/contact-ceos

Confluence users such as me, who write online manuals for software or business, including procedure manuals continue to be concerned about these issues:

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONF-2522 (soon to have its 10th anniversary)

and

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONF-5095 (soon to have its 9th anniversary)

I can speak for my colleagues in the technical writing field that we are gobsmacked that these issues seem so glaring to us but have not even been assigned to anyone at Atlassian.

Even the lowliest open source wiki can do this stuff. Why can't Confluence?

I started out with dreams of using Confluence for procedure manuals with my clients, but I can't look them in the eye and say that I am leading them to a product that does not have global search and replace.

I'm banging on about this because Confluence is so good in so many other ways. It is so frustrating not to be able to use it because of these small things.

Please take a moment to read the comments on these issues and feel the dismay and despondency that 10 years of waiting for these simple things has brought.

I'd really like to have a brief reply from you saying that you have received and read this message.

Regards

David

You can use SQL script to search and replace inside the database. We recently used this to mass replaced tens of thousands of macros in the code. However, I too am very disappointed that global search and replace, copying a space, and PDF's have been so long ignored.

Well it's still unassigned... no wonder!
Wondering who does sees these comments

It is very sad to see that this issue is still open. Now it is approaching its 10th anniversary.

I know this is not a place for side discussion but PDF export in general is another point of not considering Confluence as a serious tool for documentation. I need to spend hours/weeks/months playing with HTML/CSS to adjust export to PDF to look any closer to what FrameMaker or Flare do right out of the box. We already paid several thousand $ for Confluence and we still need to spend a huge amount of time to create a quality pdf output or we have to buy another plugin for another couple thousand $ to simply convert Confluence to PDF. This is ridiculous.

I, too, have stopped recommending Confluence for any serious documentation work because of this issue as well as CONF-27049 and CONF-2814.

I have given up the idea of using Confluence for business procedure manuals or any serious documentation. Atlassian is just a propeller-head club. Nice if you are a developer but otherwise forget it.

9 years later and no update? Ouch.

It would be nice to know if this will ever be scheduled to be done. It is definitely not looking hopeful.

Is there a chance that the community can help to add this functionallty to Confluence core?

Still the question if there are any plans to integrate this in the near future?

Can't believe this is not supported!

We desperately need search and replace and we need to be able to search and replace macros as well.

How can an issue that was created 8 years ago
Created: 05/Jan/05 10:09 PM

Still be in an Unassigned state?

Is there any pride in resolving issues that customers have been asking for???

There is no possible way to edit a page in confluence by using Ctrl-F to search for something.
In the Wiki Markup Editor not only was this possible,...but it worked as it should have.
So many things were lost with the removal of the Wiki Markup Editor,...this is huge example of a simple function that was lost.

It would be interesting to know what IS on the road map if such a basic function that has been an issue for such a long time is not high enough priority to be addressed.

Marcos - What tools have you found to be worth checking out? I have only looked at Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware, which seems to have the features I need.

I have similar comments, Sherif, about the viability of Confluence as a tool suitable for any documentation project. This issue as well as CONF-2814 & CONF-9293 make managing any substantial project difficult at best and impossible at worst. Confluence is certainly well-entrenched in my organization and probably won't disappear any time soon. We have stopped recommending it for any new projects and not to our clients. There are other tools that do not suffer from these intractable issues.

Thanks for clarifying, Sherif. I can't base my business on 'someday'. This shows that Atlassian is not serious about Confluence being a tool for managing documentation. I shall look for another tool to use with my clients.

Thanks for the feedback guys. This is something we would like to do at some stage. However, it is not in our current roadmap. These feature requests remain open because they are things that we would like to do. As we get to them we will update the issues and let you know. Thanks for your patience with this one, but it is currently not scheduled but something we would like to get to someday. We will keep you updated.

Sorin if what you just said is true then Confluence will never be more than a tool used by software developers. I have been promoting it for use in business to create wikis for businesses who are not software developers. They expect vital commonly used features to be available as part of the UI and not require the user to have to use a screwdriver under the bonnet. If this is true than I need to start finding another wiki for my business clients now. I would like somebody from Atlassian management to set us straight. Are they going to fix this or not? If they are, when?

I doubt Atlassian will fix this in the foreseeable future even if we all consider it very useful. That's because you can always do this at database level. I know we shouldn't do this but half of the confluence problems are solved at this level.

/sorin

It hasn't even been assigned to anyone!

I do not understand how this feature still hasn't been implemented.

@Sorin, I think Kirill is looking for a cure not a treatment.. (although the cure should also involve user education )

Sorry but the solution to this is to do the redirect on your frontend (like nginx). Using nginx in front of jira is starting to because something really needed after some time.

Recently we have enabled HTTPS mode on our Confluence server. After the switch users are seeing warning messages that Confluence pages contain unsecured content (an example is attached). The research showed that in many places users were adding absolute paths instead of direct names of Confluence pages. So if this feature would help in migrating the remaining http links to https and I will vote for it.

Tiki Wiki CMS has had this since late 2010. http://doc.tiki.org/Search+and+replace – Why am I here?

My question stands. How can Atlassian promote Confluence for technical documentation when this feature is absent? This issue does not even have an assignee!!

i gave up on this.
we might better move to another product instead.

True! Well, at least it's not 8 years aro.... hey waaaait a minute!

Oh boy, 7 years around, I fear my vote on this is wasted ...
Still having to use webdav for this is not quite what I expect from what Confluence has grown into by now.

How to automate adding text to Confluence pages covers some of this requirement.

Just to add that one possibility is to configure a drive for WebDav-Access. Each page is then a folder with a *.txt-file containing in storage format the content of that page.

Using a text editor (like Notepad++) and the option "Find and Replace in Files" (include subdirectories) I was able to do some extraordinary useful patches...

(this was working well for confluence 4.1

This is especially needed for using template-spaces, where a sample-space is configured with a bunch of macros (which have e.g. very often an spacekey-parameter) and then do just a copy of that sample space to create a new pre-configured space.

No it doesn't duplicate CONF-4042!!

Issue CONF-4042 is about search and replace within one page--it is about an editor feature. CONF-2522 is about global search and replace across a whole space or several spaces.

Please don't confuse this situation! There are people like me who can't start to use Confluence seriously with clients until the global search and replace (CONF-2522) is available.

This editor feature CONF-4042 might be nice but it won't help a client who wants to replace a word throughout several spaces.

Updating title & description

If you are using Firefox you could try using Foxreplace. I am using it with Confluence 3.1.1.

I worked out a way to do this using powerful search and replace software FarHTML through WebDAV. This is basically a hack and I'd be scared to let clients loose with it, but I got it working. I haven't seen WebDAV in Confluence 4, but I believe that the pages may not be so clearly shown in Wiki markup, so maybe this method that I have taken a year to get right is now harder to use or maybe not going to work any more at all.

I really don't understand how Atlassian is promoting Confluence for technical documentation but does not provide global search and replace.

How can I convince a new client to move their documentation to Confluence without this feature? "Umm.. Well, it is a requested feature and umm it is getting a few more votes and umm no, not they haven't made any promises, but this is so ridiculous that surely they will make it available soon. Will you still look at my proposal anyway? We can jsut keep our fingers crossed."

Just passing on a request from a customer I was talking to: where is the page level and global/space level search and replace? Browsers don't do the replace, and obviously can't search a space!

My sympathies are with Ole Kværnø - not because he sounds Danish too, but because of doing away with the wiki markup window which was is my only way of doing search&replace operations - outside Confluence, naturally!
It is a feature that was a sensation with the birth of PCs in the early 80ies - it should not be in 2011.

It would be a welcome addition. I managed to find success through atlassian answers https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/12526/confluence-wiki-markup-search-and-replace. With the solution offered in answers, i managed to search and replace for wiki markup (user macros) against confluence version 3.5.11 as part of my migration strategy to confluence version 4.0. It worked perfectly well. I suspect (know) this will not work on confluence 4.0, but may help those looking for a solution for earlier versions.

I've been seeing a few requests for this functionality come in. I think it would be a good addition.

I'm still in shock. Removing the wiki markup altogether! - A terrible idea in the first place.

Without provinding search&replace - a trigger for my company to look for another wiki

We just renamed our server which hosts Jira, we are not able to use the old name for redirecting and now have to change all jira-macro links in Confluence. This is not doable without this feature.

Just voted for this. I had a problem where after using the UWC to convert hundreds of pages, lots of them were not in the index. A quick search and replace of one character in each page would push it into the index and I had to use the unsupported Global Search and Replace Plugin. Besides being unsupported, the plugin was also not working on Confluence 3.4.x so I had to drop some backported java classes into a specific folder inside the plugin jar to get it working.

This is not how it should be. A very useful feature like this should be a fully supported built in feature of Confluence and I hope it gets enough votes to be noticed soon!

Still waiting for this feature. I have a proven method of creating quality management systems (QMS) using Confluence. I have clients waiting. I can't start most of them because they are not programmers and would have to pay me to do every global change in the QMS. It is not ethical to sell a product to a client in this situation. I still can't understand why this feature is not available or is not getting priority.

Glad to see this has been upgraded to Major. We seem to frequently rename concepts part-way through doing our design documents, and this would be a huge timesaver in those situations.

Changed priority to 'Major'. This feature is much requested and highly valued. Will also link to CONF-4042.

We are new to Confluence and have great hopes for it to become an important tool for us. One thing puzzles us--the lack of proper search and replace with step-through confirmation. We have the free plug in. It is OK for us if we are brave, but we couldn't easily let a customer loose with it. It is far too brutal. I'd see a proper search and replace facility as essential for Confluence to be used by ordinary mortals. The lack of this is close to being a show stopper for an important part of our business, procedures manuals for small business. Procedures manuals need global search and replace for all kinds of reasons, but not something that can wipe you out if you make one false move.

A basic search and replace plugin is now available at http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/CONFEXT/Global+Search+and+Replace+Plugin

It's not recommended to do that unless you're sure with your SQL. I'd rather not provide the instructions here; best to wait for the feature than to make modifications directly to the database.

Exporting to XML sounds very cumbersome and time-consuming. How difficult is it to search and replace using an SQL query to the database?

A couple workarounds:

For a single page: The replace macro could help;
For an entire site: you can export to xml, open in a text editor, and do a search & replace. Alternatively, you can search and replace within the BODYCONTENT table.

I present Confluence to our user base as a "design space". The user doesn't necessarily need to know what the final product (page, space, what-have-you) will look like; I encourage them to just start - let the organization grow organically. This is the opposite of the Wikipedia approach which uses the wiki as a "presentation space" where you post already formulated, though editable, ideas. (At least you hope so!)

There are lots of problems with the "design space" model, of course, but wikis are one of the only environments where it is truly possible. A space-wide find and replace would be a great boon to the approach. If you create more than a few pages, certainly if you go into any depth (parent/child wise) you need an easy way to "adjust" your nomenclature across the board. Otherwise the organic structure can fall apart.

This feature seems like a non-critical request, but it could have significant impact on how Confluence is used.

ideally there should be a space wide search and replace too. for instance today we changed the nomenclature of a term we use frequently within the company. i want to find all instances of it and replace them. there should be a find and replace through the site feature

what would be awesome is if it supported REGEX

This would be nice to have even just on a page level. A search/replace feature when in edit mode, since it doesn't appear that IE or Firefox support this directly.