# Search text through multiple documents

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/search-text-through-multiple-documents/114594>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [January 8, 2018, 6:14pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/search-text-through-multiple-documents/114594 "2018-01-08T18:14:11Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![siddharthaman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cdc98d/32.png) [@siddharthaman](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/siddharthaman)\
**Post date:** [January 8, 2018, 6:14pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/search-text-through-multiple-documents/114594/1 "2018-01-08T18:14:11Z")

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Hi All,  
I have around 3000 documents(these are text documents) that I have indexed in ElasticSearch.  
Now I want to retrieve the 5 or 10 best relevant documents on the basis of a particular query(which would be a 1 or 2 sentence query). Now I dont think the full text query search will work for me. Any suggestions on what kind of search I could use for my use-case?

Thanks

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**Author:** ![dadoonet](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/dadoonet/32/137187_2.png) [@dadoonet](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/dadoonet)\
**Post date:** [January 8, 2018, 6:38pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/search-text-through-multiple-documents/114594/2 "2018-01-08T18:38:06Z")

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Any example?

Why do you think full text search won't be useful here?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![siddharthaman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cdc98d/32.png) [@siddharthaman](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/siddharthaman)\
**Post date:** [January 8, 2018, 6:45pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/search-text-through-multiple-documents/114594/3 "2018-01-08T18:45:19Z")

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One example that I can think of a query:  
"Foo utility is not accessible from XYZ api".

Now our customers write the documents that I want to index. These documents might have a statement written as  
"The utility foo could not be accessed from XYZ api".

So Full text search will not work for me, even though I want to return the said document as it matches my query.

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**Author:** ![dadoonet](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/dadoonet/32/137187_2.png) [@dadoonet](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/dadoonet)\
**Post date:** [January 8, 2018, 7:03pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/search-text-through-multiple-documents/114594/4 "2018-01-08T19:03:17Z")

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I don't understand why it would not work.

I mean that the more terms that match the better. Adding to this phrase matching, synonyms, fuzzy queries and that would probably help.

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**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [February 5, 2018, 7:03pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/search-text-through-multiple-documents/114594/5 "2018-02-05T19:03:29Z")

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