# Highlight partial matches? **URL:** \ **Category:** Elasticsearch\ **Created:** [December 5, 2012, 9:28am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/highlight-partial-matches/9949 "2012-12-05T09:28:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![A\_Zed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/eb8c5e/32.png) [@A\_Zed](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/A_Zed)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2012, 9:28am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/highlight-partial-matches/9949/1 "2012-12-05T09:28:40Z")
I'm using ngrams to do partial matching. I would like to retrieve fragments of the documents that match the partial text, with highlighting. I have the highlight option in the query, but it works only for full text searches; for partial searches, the highlight entry is empty. I can always add the field to the "fields" section and get the results that way; but I would prefer to just get snippets (fragments) instead of the entire document. Any ideas? -- ---
**Author:** ![A\_Zed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/eb8c5e/32.png) [@A\_Zed](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/A_Zed)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2012, 9:41am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/highlight-partial-matches/9949/2 "2012-12-05T09:41:52Z")
Found it. One must use the alias for the partial match in the highlight section. Works like a charm! On Wednesday, December 5, 2012 1:28:40 AM UTC-8, A Zed wrote: > I'm using ngrams to do partial matching. I would like to retrieve > fragments of the documents that match the partial text, with highlighting. > I have the highlight option in the query, but it works only for full text > searches; for partial searches, the highlight entry is empty. > I can always add the field to the "fields" section and get the results > that way; but I would prefer to just get snippets (fragments) > instead of the entire document. Any ideas? -- ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2017, 3:01am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/highlight-partial-matches/9949/3 "2017-07-06T03:01:23Z")