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# Search

Use a global search box to find any item in your workspace across all modules, or search within a grid or a tree.

In this topic:

## Perform a global search

Use the global search to find an item in any area of your current workspace. The following fields are searchable: ID, Name, Description.

When you use the global search, suggestions are displayed based on your previous searches.

To perform a global search:

1. Click the Search button in the masthead.

2. Enter a search term:

   - Type the string you want to find. You can use special characters and wildcards. For details, see Special characters and wildcards.

   - Start typing an item's ID, name, or description.

     You can limit your search to a more specific item type, by clicking on the item type in the search results. For example, assume you want to find all features beginning with 184. Type in 184 and wait for the search results. The search results show features, issues, and tasks that begin with 184 with a header for each item type. Click on the Features heading to only show features that begin with 184.

   - Paste a link to an item that you received by email. This opens the item.

     Tip: Use this method to avoid opening parallel instances of the product in multiple tabs.

3. To include custom fields that were defined by your admin as searchable, click the Expand button in the search box and turn on the Include Searchable Fields switch.

   Note:

   - A user-defined field is searchable only if it was defined by your admin as searchable. For details, see Custom fields.

   - After your admin has defined a field as searchable, the data is indexed. As a result, search results for the field are not immediately available.

   - When Include Searchable Fields is on, global search performance may be impacted, especially when using long or complex search phrases.

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## Special characters and wildcards

You can use special characters and wildcards in your search.

Special characters

Some special characters are indexed by default, indicating that they are part of a word. If the text you want to find includes an indexed special character, you can include it in your search term as part of the text.

Other special characters are not indexed by default, and are treated as a space (word break).

- Indexed special characters: .~@#£€$¢¥§%°^()-_{}[]<>

- Non-indexed special characters: `’!&+=|/:;”,?*\

For example, to search for [CPE], because the square bracket "[" is indexed, you must use one of the following terms: [cpe, ?cpe, or *cpe. Searching for the term cpe alone does not return the required result.

Wildcards

You can use wildcard symbols in your search terms.

- To search for any part of a word, use the asterisk (*) wildcard notation.

- To search for any single character, use the question mark (?) notation.

For example, to find the word "defect" you can use ??fec, *fec, but not fec on its own, since the wildcard options indicate that there are other characters before fec. You do not need to include the remaining characters of the searched word.

Note: By default, wildcard symbols are not indexed. They can only function as wildcards, but not as part of the text you want to find.

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## Search a grid or tree

You can find an item in the context of a grid or a tree.

Click the Search button above the grid or tree, and type a search entry.

Context | Search results
--- | ---
Tree search | Tree items that match the search criteria. Click a result to highlight it in the tree and open its details.
Grid search | Lists matching items in the grid. The results are based on the filter applied to the grid. Grid search is not available when the grid is grouped.

Note: The purpose of the context search is not to display a full set of results, but to quickly search for a small number of items. If you need full results, use the regular name field filter with an asterisk wildcard character at the beginning of the filtered sub-string.

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