Even using quotes, a basic search will return LIKE items

[Kirk Gonzalez]

Hello, 

I'm hoping this is not a ridiculous question. I'm new to Jira, but I've been tasked with writing a quick reference for my team. I read that the basic search (and I suppose the advanced search) will combine the search terms if you include them within quotes. Example: "Jira icons" (with quotes) would only return Summary and Description results that had 'Jira' and 'icons' next to each other. When not using quotes (Jira icons) the search will look for either term and would not care if together or not. 

But I have found that sometimes (particularly towards the end of the results list) that I may get results that don't contain "Jira icons" together or sometimes even "Jira" or "Icons" separately. I asked about this with one of my users who is more familiar with Jira, and he pointed out that the underlying basic search is still JQL, and it has a tilde that represents "Like," so the results may include something that is like Jira or icons. This seemed off to me, but just to check I tried to change the advance search to a "=" instead of "~" and got an error saying that equals "=" was an invalid operator. Is this true, you cannot completely limit the results to "Jira icons" even when putting in quotes only when they are together?  BTW, I'm using Jira v9.5.1

Thanks, in advance.

[Rik de Valk · Accepted solution]

Hi,

This is indeed how Quick Search works. 

Any (free) text fields can only be searched using the ~ fuzzy search.

Because it is a quick search, it is meant to be a simple search. And that makes it less precise. 

If you're looking for more precise results, you'll have to use JQL. 

You can read more about text search in JQL here: https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/search-for-issues-using-the-text-field/

Have a nice day. Rik

[Kirk Gonzalez]

Thank you, Rik. Appreciate it. 

[Aaron Pavez _ServiceRocket_]

Hi @Kirk Gonzalez 

Can you share with us the JQL you are running?

And a screenshot of the BASIC search parameters.

Regards

[Kirk Gonzalez]

Hey Aaron,

Thank you for trying to answer. I was not using any JQL. I was using the basic search but within quotes. I was trying to limit the search to only find text where the text Jira and icons were together. I thought if I had both words together in quotes, it would be using the AND operator instead of the OR operator (but behind the scenes).

But I found my results were looking like it was an OR instead. If either of the words were in the summary, they would return in the results.

When I clicked the query to see what it looked like, I saw the tilde.

I can't show you the screenshot of the search I did. My company is so locked down that I cannot even come to this board on my work computer. I have to go to my personal computer to enter a question. This is why there is a pretty sizable lag time in me checking the response you gave. Sorry about that.  In any case, I appreciate your response. I think @Rik has answered this. But I don't know why Atlassian's help said the quotes would work.