Use Wildcards and the Equal Sign in Searches

Wildcards

You can use a "wildcard" character or characters with letters or numbers to indicate you want to find records that begin with, end with, or contain those letters/numbers. There are four characters you can use as a wildcard: the asterisk (*), the percent sign (%), the underscore (_), and the question mark (?).

There should be no space between the wildcard and the other characters.

Example:

Enter 123* or 123% to find records that start with 123, such as 123, 12345, 123ABC, etc.

Example:

Enter *123 or %123 to find records that end in 123, such as 123, 5123, or PUMP123.

Example:

Enter *123* or %123% to find records that contain 123, such as 123, 1234, PUMP123, or XX12300Valve.

Example:

Enter Elec* or Elec% to find records that contain words that start with "Elec," such as electric, electromagnetic, or electrode.

Example:

Enter 123? or 123_ to find any four-character records that start with 123, such as 1234, 1230, 123g, etc.

Example:

Enter _18 or ?18 to find any three-character records that end with 18, such as 418 or J18.

The Equal Sign (=) Operator

You can place an equal sign (=) before a word or number to find only records that match that word or number exactly. There should be no space between the = and the word or characters that follow it.

Example:

Enter =123 to find any records with the exact characters 123 in the field. (Search results would not include numbers such as 0123 or 1234AB. If you enter just 123, without the =, search results would include 0123 and 1234AB.)

 

Searching for Null and Not Null Values

You can enter the following values into a search field on the List tab:

See Also

Special Characters