Will a search in Confluence look inside Macros on a Page for content?

[Thomas Bithell]

When an macro is placed around content in one page and then the corresponding include macro is placed on other pages, a Confluence search for text contained in the originating macro does not return the pages in the search that include the macro content. Essentially when Confluence is searching Pages it will not look inside include macros.

I believe this is designed behavior but I can not find any documentation about how Confluence search works with include macros. 

Can anyone confirm what the expected behavior is, and if there is a way to enable search to look inside a Page's include macros?

[AnnWorley · Accepted solution]

The behavior is expected, and consistent with my testing of the Excerpt include and Include page macros. The page originally containing the content is found by the search but the page that is including the content from the original does not appear in searches.

Although expected, not everyone considers it optimal. Please vote or comment on this suggestion to follow the progress of the relevant ticket: Confluence search results should include content added to page via the {include} and {excerpt-include} macros

[Thomas Bithell]

Thank you for the response and link to the Suggestion. 

[Kim Tillett]

Very helpful, thank you Ann!  Voted for the issue and now watching the ticket.  Slightly discouraging that it was opened in March 2010 and still has not been resolved, but we shall see what the future holds!