Search Operators for LINKS (backlinks, forwardlinks)

+1 for incoming: and outgoing: search operators.

I also want to add a usecase for this. I use the daily note to track meeting notes with multiple people. It looks something like,

## #meet with [[person1]], [[person2]]
...
...

## #meet with [[person2]], [[person3]]
...
...

Having search over an entire file in this case is not super useful, however it’d be great to combine with line:, so something like,

line:(outgoing:person2 outgoing:person3 tag:meet)

would very precisely capture this usecase.

Workaround: I’m currently doing the same with just text search instead of outgoing link search. Kinda works for now but link would be more precise.

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Most people don’t include folder names in the links so this won’t work. I wish there was a solution :sweat:

I would like to be able to query by links. Both incoming and outgoing if you can.

But specifically I am using some links as tags, for example “[[moscow]]”, therefore I want to find all documents that have “[[moscow]]”. But simply line:“[[moscow]]” does not always work, because sometimes it’s “[[moscow|Москву]]”. There are some arcane regexes mentioned above, but can you maybe please grant us this simple request of letting us query by inlinks and outlinks? Just like we can query by tags.

I’ve quit Evernote because they wouldn’t let me have simple queries. Obsidian is better, but this request is going for years already, this is some fundamental thing, I don’t see how you don’t make it top priority feature.

4 Likes

Just wanted to add a +1 to the incoming: and outgoing: search operator suggestions!

My current use case is for an embed search query on a persons page with all of the meetings in which I’ve referenced their name.

This is what I’d like to be able to do

outgoing:"@Persons Name" tag:#meetings
2 Likes

I find it very strange that this can’t be done considering how quintessential of a function links are in Obsidian. Even [[link]] can’t be searched.

Why I would like this:

I’m a heavy user of Canvas. I would like to be able to drag and drop notes with the link [[Ethics]] to a Canvas, which would be easy if I could have them displayed in the search pane.

Dragging notes from the [[Ethics]] backlink pane to the Canvas works, but it’s tedious because every time I’ve dragged a note into the Canvas, the Canvas becomes the active note and the backlink pane clears. It also only allows dragging one note at a time, because you can’t select multiple notes and then drag them.

In this case, being able to search for [[Ethics]] or link:ethics and drag notes from the search results would be a lot easier. Although you can’t select and drag multiple notes there either, the results would at least remain visible even when the Canvas file is active, which isn’t the case for the [[Ethics]] backlink pane.

(This pairs nicely with another suggestion: Select multiple notes in the Search tab )

1 Like