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Wildcard (search)


The Wildcard search is used when you need special-case tactics to find something.  For example, if you want to find all death dates in Indiana, you could try using Contains like this:

Individual / Death Place / Contains / , IN

but you might come up with Indianapolis, IN or New Delhi,,, India.  Using the Wildcard search:

Individual / Death Place / Wildcard / *, IN

only records with a death place ending in ", IN" would be found.

Here are the rules:

Character(s)   
in pattern Matches in field Example 
   
? Any single character Da?e 
* Zero or more characters M* 
# Any single digit (0-9) ### 
[charlist] Any single character in charlist [A-M] or [aeiou] 
[!charlist] Any single character NOT in charlist [!X] 

A group of one or more characters (charlist) enclosed in brackets ([ ]) can be used to match any single character.  Charlist can also specify a range of characters by using a hyphen (-) to separate the upper and lower bounds of the range.  (Ranges must be in ascending sort order.)  Multiple ranges can be included within the brackets; for example [a-et-z] would specify a through e and t through z.  

An exclamation mark (!) at the beginning of a charlist means that a match is made if any character except those in the charlist are found.
Examples:

Kind of match Pattern Match No match 
    
Multiple characters a*a Alabama, "Alaska" arkansas 
 *e e, "Debbie", "Marie" Debby 
 *,*,*,can* Port Hope,, ON, Can." Port Hope, Can. 
Multiple characters mc* McGinnis, "McCabe" MacDonald 
Single character da?e Dave, "Dale" Darlene 
Single digit a#a a0a, "a1a", "a2a" aaa, "a10a" 
Range of characters [a-b]* Al, "Andy", "Bill", Bob" Carl, "Zelda" 
Outside a range [!a-e]* Frank, "Michael" Andy, "Bob", "Ellen" 

If you want to search for an asterisk, question mark, exclamation point or pound sign you must enclose these characters in opening and closing square brackets.  For example:
Individual /  Notes-Research / Contains / [?]

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