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Refine Search With Wildcards and Operators
Get more control over your search results by using wildcards and operators in your searches. Using wildcards and operators in your searches can ensure you’re seeing all applicable records in your search results. Learn how to use them and their limitations.
Wildcards
| Wildcard | Usage |
|---|---|
| Asterisk (*) | Use an asterisk to find items that match zero or more characters in the middle or at the end of your query. The more specific your terms the more relevant the results. For example, to find all items for the singular and plural of the term prospect, enter prospect*. Avoid using partial terms like prosp because you can get unintended matches such as results for the term prosperity. To find a literal asterisk (*) inside a phrase, enclose the string between quotation marks and precede the special character with a backward slash (\). The backward slash is an escape character. Examples:
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| Question mark (?) | Use a question mark to match only one character in the middle or at end of your query. You can't use a question mark in a lookup search. To find a literal question mark (?) inside a phrase, enclose the string between quotation marks and precede the special character with a backward slash (\). The backward slash is an escape character. Examples
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Operators
| Operator | Usage |
|---|---|
| AND | Use AND to find items that match all the search terms. Example: To find items with the words john and smith, enter john AND smith . If an operator isn't specified, AND is the default operator except for documents and solutions. When searching for those items, you must specify AND because OR is the default operator. For Knowledge search, if only a few records are returned with AND as the default operator, it switches to using the OR operator. |
| AND NOT | Use AND NOT to find items that don’t contain the search term. Example: To find items with the word john but not smith, enter john AND NOT smith. |
| OR | User OR to find items with at least one of the search terms. Example: To find items with only john or john and smith, enter john OR smith |
| Parentheses ( ) | Use parentheses to group search terms with logical operators. Examples:
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| Quotation marks (” “) | Use quotation marks around search terms to find matches in the order you enter your terms. A search for "monday meeting" finds items that contain monday meeting but not meeting monday. Search doesn’t look for an exact match for your terms. If you enter the term "John Smith" you can also get results for John Doe Smith. If you use quotation marks, spelling correction, nicknames, and synonyms aren’t applied. To include the words and, or, and not in your search results, surround those words in double quotes. Otherwise they’re treated as operators. |
When you combine operators in a search string, they’re evaluated in the order Parenthesis, AND and AND NOT (in order from right to left), OR.
