How to Use Wildcards in Searches

When searching, keep the following in mind when entering your search string.

  • You can use * and ? wildcards in your searches.
    • * is a wildcard character used to indicate zero or more characters in a folder name. For example, "a*c" will match "ac", "abc", "a12345c", and so on.
    • ? is a wildcard character used to indicate any single character in a folder name. For example, "a?c" will match "aac", "abc", "acc", "a2c", "a c", and so on.
  • If you don't use a wildcard in the search string, the searching mechanism assumes you're performing a substring search and adds a * wildcard to the beginning and end of the string you entered. If you've explicitly entered wildcards in your string, however, the searching mechanism does not add any wildcards.
  • You cannot use * or ? literally. These characters are always interpreted as wildcards.