How to Use Wildcards and Operators in Salesforce Global Search

How to Use Search Wildcards

• Use an asterisk (*) to find items that match zero or more characters at the middle or end of your search query. For example, "prospect*" matches "prospect" and "prospects."
• Use a question mark (?) to find items that match exactly one character at the middle or end of your query. For example, "fo?d" matches "food" and "fold."

Use specific search terms to get more relevant results. For example, using a partial term like "prosp*" could return unintended matches like "prosperity." Search terms that are too general may also take longer to return results. For more details, see the Wildcards section of the FIND {SearchQuery} | SOQL and SOSL Reference documentation.

Wildcard Limitations

• Leading wildcards (used at the beginning of a search term) are not supported, with the exception of standard lookups in the Salesforce Classic interface.
• Asterisks and question marks within a quoted phrase function as wildcards. For example, "fo?d" matches "food" and "fold."
• Queries with wildcards are inherently less performant than standard queries. If an expected record is not returned, try searching with a unique value from the record without wildcards to confirm the record exists in the index.

How to Use Search Operators

• AND — Returns items that match all of the search terms.
• AND NOT — Returns items that do not contain the specified search term.
• OR — Returns items containing at least one of the search terms.
• Parentheses — Groups search terms together. Grouped terms are evaluated before other terms in the search string.
• Quotation marks — Returns items that match all search terms in the exact order entered.

Operator Evaluation Order

When multiple operators are combined in a single search string, they are evaluated in the following order:

1. Parentheses
2. AND or AND NOT (evaluated right to left)
3. OR