Using Wildcard Characters

A wildcard character is a keyboard character such as an asterisk (*) or a question mark (?) that you can use to represent real characters when you’re searching for files or folders. Wildcard characters are often used in place of real characters when you don’t know what the real character is or you don’t want to type the entire name.

Asterisk (*)

You can use the asterisk as a substitute for zero or more characters. For example, if you want to use the Search Companion to find a file that begins with "gloss" but can't remember the rest of the file name, you can type "gloss*" in the Name of file or folder box. The Search Companion will locate all files of any file type that begin with "gloss," including Glossary.txt, Glossary.doc, and Glossy.docs.

You can also narrow the search to a specific type of file. For example, if you had typed "gloss*.doc" in the previous example, the search would have located all files that begin with "gloss" but have the file name extension .doc, such as Glossary.doc and Glossy.doc.

Question Mark (?)

You can use the question mark as a substitute for a single character in a name. For example, if you typed "gloss?.doc" as the search criterion, the Search Companion would locate the files Glossy.doc or Gloss1.doc, but not Glossary.doc or Glossy.bmp.