Special characters in search
Some punctuation characters have special meanings and should only be used to perform one of the special search types.
Characters and their use
| Character name | Character | Use |
|---|---|---|
| Colon | : | Used between a field ID and a search term. |
| Square brackets | [ ] | Used around a range term (inclusive range queries). |
| Parentheses | ( ) | Used around a range term (exclusive range queries). |
| Plain double quotes | " | Used around a phrase. |
| Asterisk | * | Used as a wildcard for multiple character searching. |
| Question mark | ? | Used as a wildcard for single character searching. |
| Tilde | ~ | Used at the end of a word to search for other similar sounding words. |
Note: If you want to search for these characters and not use them for their search functions, you can put them inside double quotes. For example, "ABC:123". They will be treated as a simple text search.
