Searching within the library

Search…
The search bar is located in the icon bar.
Screenshot of the search bar
To make the cursor jump to the search field, you can:
Click in the search field.
Press Ctrl + F.
Search settings
At the right of the search text field, 2 buttons allow for selecting some settings:
Regular expressions
Whether or not the search query uses regular expressions.
Case sensitivity
Whether or not the search query is case sensitive.
Simple search
In a normal search, the program searches your library for all occurrences of the words in your search string, once you entered it. Only entries containing all words will be considered matches. To search for sequences of words, enclose the sequences in double-quotes. For instance, the query progress "marine aquaculture" will match entries containing both the word "progress" and the phrase "marine aquaculture".
All entries that do not match are hidden, leaving for display the matching entries only.
To stop displaying the search results, just clear the search field, press Esc or click on the "Clear" (X) button.
Search using regular expressions
Make sure that the button "regular expressions" is activated
General syntax
In order to search specific fields only and/or include logical operators in the search expression, a special syntax is available in which these can be specified. E.g. to search for entries whose an author contains miller, enter:
author = miller
Both the field specification and the search term support regular expressions. If the search term contains spaces, enclose it in quotes. Do not use spaces in the field specification! E.g. to search for entries about image processing, type:
title|keywords = "image processing"
You can use and, or, not, and parentheses as intuitively expected:
(author = miller or title|keywords = "image processing") and not author = brown
The = sign is actually a shorthand for contains. Searching for an exact match is possible using matches or ==. Using != tests if the search term is not contained in the field (equivalent to not ... contains ...). The selection of field types to search (required, optional, all) is always overruled by the field specification in the search expression. If a field is not given, all fields are searched. For example, video and year == 1932 will search for entries with any field containing video and the field year being exactly 1932.
Pseudo fields
JabRef defines the following pseudo fields:
Pseudo field
Purpose
Example
anyfield
Search in any field
anyfield contains fruit: search for entries having one of its fields containing the word fruit. This is identical to just writing apple. It may be more useful as anyfield matches apple, where one field must be exactly apple for a match.
anykeyword
Search among the keywords
anykeyword matches apple: search for entries which have the word apple among its keywords. However, as this also matches pineapple, it may be more useful in searches of the type anykeyword matches apple, which will not match apples or pineapple
key
Search for citation keys
citationkey == miller2005: search for an entry whose citation key is miller2005
entrytype
Search for entries of a certain type
entrytype = thesis: search entries whose type (as displayed in the entrytype column) contains the word thesis (which would be phdthesis and mastersthesis)
Advanced use of regular expressions
Regular expressions (regex for short) define a language for specifying the text to be matched, for example when searching. JabRef uses regular expressions as defined in Java. For extensive information, please, look at the Java documentation and at the Java tutorial.
Regular expressions and casing
By default, regular expressions do not account for upper/lower casing. Hence, while the examples below are all in lower case, they match also upper- and mixed case strings.
If casing is important to your search, activate the case-sensitive button.
Searching for entries with an empty or missing field
. means any character
+ means one or more times
author != .+ returns entries with empty or no author field.
Searching for a given word
\b means word boundary
\B means not a word boundary
keywords = \buv\b matches uv but not lluvia (it does match uv-b however)
author = \bblack\b matches black but neither blackwell nor blacker
author == black does not match john black, but author = \bblack\b does.
author = \bblack\B matches blackwell and blacker, but not black.
Searching with optional spelling
? means none or one copy of the preceding character.
{n,m} means at least n, but not more than m copies of the preceding character.
[ ] defines a character class
title =neighbou?r matches neighbour and neighbor, and also neighbours and neighbors, and neighbouring and neighboring, etc.
title = neighbou?rs?\b matches neighbour and neighbor, and also neighbours and neighbors, but neither neighbouring nor neighboring.
author = s[aá]nchez matches sanchez and sánchez.
abstract = model{1,2}ing matches modeling and modelling.
abstract = modell?ing also matches modeling and modelling.
year == 200[5-9]|201[0-1]​specifies the range of years 2005-2011 (200[5-9] specifies years 2005-2009;| means "or"; 201[0-1] specifies years 2010-2011).
author = (John|Doe)matches entries written by either John or Doe.
author = (John|Doe).+(John|Doe)matches entries written by both John or Doe.
Searching for strings with a special character (()[]{}\^-=$!|?*+.)
If a special character (i.e. ( ) [ ] { } \ ^ - = $ ! | ? * + . ) is included in your search string, it has to be escaped with a backslash, such as \} for }.
It means that to search for a string including a backslash, two consecutive backslashes (\\) have to be used: abstract = xori{\\c{c}}o matches xoriço.
Searching for strings with double quotation marks (")
The character " has a special meaning: it is used to group words into phrases for exact matches. So, if you search for a string that includes a double quotation, the double quotation character has to be replaced with the hexadecimal character 22 in ASCII table \x22.
Hence, to search for {\"o}quist as an author, you must input author = \{\\\x22o\}quist, with regular expressions enabled (Note: the {, _ and the } are escaped with a backslash; see above).
Indeed, \" does not work as an escape for ". Hence, neither author = {\"o}quist with regular expression disabled, nor author = \{\\\"O\}quist with regular expression enabled, will find anything even if the name {\"o}quist exists in the library.