Content Search

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Find every document that mentions a queue, a server, or an old system name. Search content searches the text of your Articles, Snippets, Templates, and Document Profiles in one go, shows each match in context with its line number, and opens a document with the matches highlighted.

• ✅ Search words, an exact phrase, or a regular expression
• ✅ Choose the document types, and whether to search titles, content, or metadata
• ✅ See each match in context, with the section and line it's on
• ✅ Open a result with its matches highlighted, and step from one to the next

Understanding Content Search

You type what you're looking for (blue), the search (green) lists one card per matching document (teal), and each card opens the document in the reader dialog, the editor, or a new tab (yellow). The search covers Articles, Snippets, Templates, and Document Profiles.

Content Search only reads. It finds text; to change it, open the document in the editor. Nothing is stored except your search options, which your browser remembers; the query text and the excerpts are not logged.

To use Content Search, you need the Administrator role, or a Role with a Repository permission set that can read Articles. The same permission covers all four document types and the document list pages. Without it, the side-menu search button is hidden and Ctrl+Shift+F does nothing.

Search

Open Search content in one of these ways. The page you open it from decides which document types are ticked:

The Search content button sits in the toolbar of every document list.

The search button in the side menu opens Search content from anywhere under Articles.

Opened from Documentation Health, the search covers every document type, like the page's own findings.

From the find bar of one document to a search of every Article and Snippet.

Type what you're looking for, and press Enter or click Search.

The dialog as it first opens. The hint under the box explains the current find mode, here Words, the default.

Tick the document types to search: Articles, Snippets, Templates, and Document Profiles. At least one stays ticked. Profile-based Articles are searched section by section. A match in a Snippet is the Snippet's own result; it isn't repeated under the Articles that include it. Deleted documents are searched only when you tick Include deleted.

Search Options

Click next to Search to show the options. When the options are folded, the line under the cog shows the find mode, and says Deleted included while Include deleted is on.

The defaults: Words, case ignored, titles and content searched, metadata left out, and deleted documents left out.

Your browser remembers every option you change, and whether the options are shown, for your next search. The ticked document types are never remembered: the page you open the dialog from sets them (see Search).

The hint under the box explains the current find mode:

Whole word counts letters, digits, and _ as word characters, so Order doesn't match OrderNumber. Every user who can read Articles can use every mode, regular expressions included.

When the search refuses a regular expression, the dialog shows only the warning, with the reason; earlier results are cleared.

The closing bracket is missing, so the warning says where the pattern breaks.

Match Inside Icons, Images, and Files

When you untick an option, the whole element is left out of the search, its alt text or label included.

Search Custom Metadata

Tick only Metadata under Search in to find documents by a Tag or a Custom Metadata value, for example every Article whose Confidentiality field is set to Internal. A metadata match shows the field name and the matching value instead of a line of text.

Confidentiality is a Custom Metadata field of the Select type; both Articles have it set to Internal.

Include Deleted Documents

Tick Include deleted to also search deleted documents; the checkbox turns red as a reminder. A deleted match looks like any other result, plus a red Deleted badge. For a profile-based Article, its sections are searched with it.

The Deleted badge tells a deleted document from the current ones.

The reader page of a deleted document says that it has been deleted. To use it again, click on the card and restore the document from its edit page, or see Show deleted records.

Read the Results

The line above the results says how many documents matched, how many matches are on this page, and how long the search took, for example 12 documents, 14 matches on this page · 153 ms. When a limit cut the result, the line says so. Page through the results with the pagers above and below them, and choose 10, 25, or 50 per page.

Each card shows where in the document the match is: the section heading and the line.

Each result is one card:

• Header: the kind (Article, Snippet, ...), the title, the number of matches, a Deleted or Shipped badge, and the document's Tags.
• Matches: each match with the text around it, under the section heading and line number it's on. The matched text is highlighted. In a table, the cells are separated by ·. The first two matches are shown; Show n more matches expands the rest. Click a match to open the document at that section.
• Buttons:
  • opens the document with the matches highlighted, in a reader dialog, or in a new tab when you have chosen Open Articles in a new tab by default (see Reading Articles).
  • opens the document in the editor, at the line of the first match. Documents shipped by Nodinite are read-only, so they have no edit button.
  • opens the document in a new tab.

Best Match First

The results are sorted best match first. Each document falls in one of these classes, best first:

Classes 1 and 2 apply only while Titles is searched. Within a class, the document with more matches comes first, then the most recently changed, then the title from A to Z.

No Results

When nothing matches, the dialog suggests how to widen the search. Each suggestion is a link that changes the option and searches again, and a suggestion shows only when it would widen the search: turn off Match case or Whole word, search every kind of document, or search titles, content, and metadata together.

Every suggestion is a one-click way to search again more widely.

Open a Result with the Matches Highlighted

Click on a card to read the document in a reader dialog, on top of the results. A bar at the top shows your search and the match you're on, for example Search: link 1 of 3 matches. Use ˄ and ˅ to go to the previous or next match.

The bar keeps your search in view; the current match is outlined.

Close the dialog to go back to the results where you left them. Open full article, or on the card, opens the reader page in a new tab, where the same bar sits under the header; × clears the highlights.

On the reader page, the bar keeps your search; the search icon at the right opens the document's own find bar.

A match in something the reader doesn't show as text, such as an image or link reference, a token, a macro, a Tag, or a metadata value, is explained in the bar, which offers to open the editor at that line.

To search for something else in the open document, press Ctrl+F: the find bar replaces the search's highlights. Text inside Mermaid diagrams is not highlighted.

Limits

Three System Parameters keep searches fast. An administrator can change them; a value saved on the System Parameters page applies to the next search.

When a limit cut the result, the line above the results says which one: an orange limited to n documents badge (ContentSearchMaxResults), or only the newest n documents were searched (ContentSearchMaxScannedDocuments). Narrow the search first: tick fewer document types, search Titles only, or use Phrase or Whole word.

Here ContentSearchMaxResults was set to 5, so the result stops at five documents. Excerpts from tables show the cells separated by a dot.

Content Search for AI Assistants

The MCP Endpoint offers the same search as the tool search_content, to the Web Client's AI Assistant and to other MCP clients such as Visual Studio Code or Claude Desktop. It finds where a word, phrase, or pattern is documented and returns the matches grouped per document, with excerpts, section names, and a link to each document's reader page, so the assistant answers with links. Unlike the Web Client dialog, it searches all four document types unless told otherwise. One call returns at most 50 documents and 5 matches per document. See MCP Tool Reference.

The AI Assistant finds the documents with search_content and links each one.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Content Search find deleted documents?

Only when you tick Include deleted in the options. See Include Deleted Documents, and Show deleted records to restore one.

Why are Templates and Document Profiles not ticked?

The page you open Search content from decides the ticked types. From the side menu, All Articles, and most other pages, Articles and Snippets are ticked; from Documentation Health, all four are. Tick the others yourself, or click Search every kind when nothing is found.

Why does a word in a Mermaid diagram not light up in the document?

The highlighting leaves diagram text alone, so the diagram keeps drawing correctly.

Can I change the text from the results?

No. Content Search only reads. Click on the card to open the document in the editor.

Why was my regular expression stopped?

An expression that takes more than a second is stopped, so a slow pattern can't hold up the search. Make it more specific, for example anchor it on a fixed prefix such as INT[0-9]{3} instead of starting with .*.

Next Steps

• Reading Articles – The reader page, and its own Ctrl+F find
• Add or manage Article
• Compare Articles

Related Topics

• Knowledge base Articles
• Snippets
• Templates
• Document Profiles
• Bulk Actions
• Custom Metadata
• AI Assistant
• MCP Tool Reference
• ContentSearchMaxResults