# Exclude searching on specific fields **URL:** \ **Category:** Elasticsearch\ **Created:** [May 31, 2016, 1:37pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/exclude-searching-on-specific-fields/51434 "2016-05-31T13:37:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Vikas\_Mestry](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/vikas_mestry/32/42301_2.png) [@Vikas\_Mestry](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Vikas_Mestry)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2016, 1:37pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/exclude-searching-on-specific-fields/51434/1 "2016-05-31T13:37:10Z")
Hello, Is there any way to NOT search on a specific field while performing a full text based search using the Query DSL / Query String Query syntax, following is the index i am creating. { "e3c95a54-2971-47ec-b177-1fdbe9e04639": { "mappings": { "81f71ece-9acc-4750-82f6-53fe47bd4489": { "properties": { "docfilename": { "type": "string" }, "usercomments": { "type": "string" }, "filepath": { "type": "string", "fields": { "raw": { "type": "string", "index": "not\_analyzed" } } }, "singlewordfield": { "type": "string", "fields": { "raw": { "type": "string", "index": "not\_analyzed" } } } } } } } } { "docfilename": "Profile.doc", "usercomments": "this is a sample comment entered by the user.", "filepath": "\path\Profile.doc", "singlewordfield": "apple" } using the following query string syntax i want to search on all the fields except the usercomments field, is this possible using the query string syntax, or is there any other approach to acheive this. {"query" :{"query\_string":{"query":"profile"}}} Thanks, Vikas. ---
**Author:** ![byronvoorbach](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/byronvoorbach/32/8283_2.png) [@byronvoorbach](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/byronvoorbach)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2016, 1:55pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/exclude-searching-on-specific-fields/51434/2 "2016-05-31T13:55:35Z")
Hi Vikas, By default, the query-string-query searches within the ["\_all field"](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/mapping-all-field.html) field. This is a field which contains all values of your document concatenated into one big string. If you want to remove one of your fields from the \_all field, you can do so via your mapping with the 'include\_in\_all' setting, as described [here](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/include-in-all.html). Your mapping would look like the following: ``` { "mappings": { "81f71ece-9acc-4750-82f6-53fe47bd4489": { "properties": { "docfilename": { "type": "string" }, "usercomments": { "type": "string", "include_in_all" : false }, "filepath": { "type": "string", "fields": { "raw": { "type": "string", "index": "not_analyzed" } } }, "singlewordfield": { "type": "string", "fields": { "raw": { "type": "string", "index": "not_analyzed" } } } } } } } ``` Since your 'usercomments' data won't exist in the '\_all field', you will not match against data from that field anymore. One other solution is to replace your query-string-query with either a multi-match-query or a combination of bool and match queries. Hope this helps 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Vikas\_Mestry](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/vikas_mestry/32/42301_2.png) [@Vikas\_Mestry](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Vikas_Mestry)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2016, 3:02pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/exclude-searching-on-specific-fields/51434/3 "2016-05-31T15:02:11Z")
Thanks for the superquick response, I have an additional query on this, how do we go about setting the "include\_in\_all" mapping for a field which would be added in the index at a later stage, since the field name would be decided at that point in time & hence cannot include the future (new) field in the mapping request upfront. Agree to your alternate solutions of using the multi-match / math queries but I have a constraint of using query-string-query due to the ease of sending search requests, as the requests are floated from a UI based app (the users type in the query-string-query syntax on a UI provided). Thanks again, Vikas. ---
**Author:** ![byronvoorbach](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/byronvoorbach/32/8283_2.png) [@byronvoorbach](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/byronvoorbach)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2016, 1:53pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/exclude-searching-on-specific-fields/51434/4 "2016-06-01T13:53:23Z")
Hi Vikas, If you know up front which fields you want to query on, you could add the '[fields](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/query-dsl-query-string-query.html#_multi_field)' parameter to your query string query. The default field is the '\_all' field, but you can also specify a list of fields to search through: ``` GET /_search { "query": { "query_string": { "query": "this AND that OR thus", "fields": [ "docfilename", "filepath", "singlewordfield" ] } } } ``` If that doesn't meet your requirement, there might be a way of identifying prefixes in the fields to be made. For example, if all new fields start with 'foo' (like foo132, foo2bar etc..), you could create a '[default index template](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/indices-templates.html)' where you can use wildcards to those fields to be not included: ``` "dynamic_templates": [ { "string_template" : { "match" : "foo*", "mapping": { "type": "string", "index": "not_analyzed", "included_in_all": false }, "match_mapping_type" : "string" } } ] } ``` Hope this makes sense 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2017, 10:47pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/exclude-searching-on-specific-fields/51434/5 "2017-07-05T22:47:15Z")