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Negative Search inverts the normal search behavior, showing results that do not contain your search term. This helps when you need to perform bulk actions on most items while excluding a specific subset.

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What You’ll Learn

  • How Negative Search filtering works
  • Where to find Negative Search in the Dashboard
  • Practical scenarios for using exclusion-based filtering

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Prerequisites

  • MainWP Dashboard with connected child sites
  • Plugins or themes installed on child sites to search

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How Negative Search Works

Animation showing Negative Search toggle excluding WooCommerce plugins from results When you enable the Negative Search toggle in the search options:
ModeBehavior
Normal searchShows items matching your keyword
Negative searchShows items that do not match your keyword
The feature filters the visible list, making it easy to select and act on the filtered results.
Negative Search is available in two locations:
PageNavigation
PluginsMainWP > Plugins > Manage Plugins
ThemesMainWP > Themes > Manage Themes
Look for the Search Options dropdown, then toggle Negative Search before entering your search term.
1

Navigate to Manage page

Go to MainWP > Plugins > Manage Plugins or MainWP > Themes > Manage Themes.
2

Expand search options

Click Search Options to expand the search panel.
3

Enable Negative Search

Toggle on Negative Search.
4

Enter exclusion term

Type the keyword you want to exclude in the search field.
5

View filtered results

The list now shows only items without your keyword in their names.
6

Perform bulk action

Select the filtered items and apply your desired bulk action.

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Common Use Cases

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Exclude WooCommerce Plugins During Updates

When updating plugins across your network, you might want to update everything except WooCommerce-related plugins to avoid disrupting active stores.
  1. Enable Negative Search
  2. Search for “WooCommerce”
  3. Select all non-WooCommerce plugins
  4. Apply the Update action

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Skip Development Plugins During Cleanup

To deactivate all plugins except your development tools:
  1. Enable Negative Search
  2. Search for “debug” or “developer”
  3. Select all non-development plugins
  4. Apply the Deactivate action

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Filter Out Vendor-Specific Themes

When cleaning up unused themes, exclude your primary theme vendor’s products:
  1. Enable Negative Search
  2. Search for the vendor name (e.g., “Starter”)
  3. Select remaining themes for deletion
  4. Apply the Delete action

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Self-Check Checklist

  • You can locate the Negative Search toggle
  • Enabling Negative Search inverts your search results
  • You can perform bulk actions on filtered results