subject: Using Wildcards when Searching for Files [print this page] Its nIts not uncommon for computer users to forget the name of a document or file. After all, many of us deal with dozens, if not hundreds, of files per day. When it comes time to recall a file, you may remember part of the files name, but not the whole thing. For example, you might remember that you named a document with the word car in it, but you cant remember if it was carreviews.doc, carinformation.doc, newcardata.doc or cardata.doc. All you can remember is the word car. Fortunately, if you remember a portion of a filename, you can use wildcard characters to search for a match. In this example, you would either open Microsoft Word (since its a .doc file) or Windows Explorer and enter your search term in the Search box. Use an asterisk (*) to indicate a string of characters that you are unsure of. For instance, car* would return any filename that begins with car such as: carreviews.doc, cardata.doc, and carinformation.doc. However, if you want to be sure that it would also return the newcardata.doc file, add an asterisk before the word car like this: *car*. Another useful wildcard character is the question mark (?). Rather than representing an entire string of characters as the asterisk does, the question mark represents a single character. For example, entering c?rdata would return results such as: cardata.doc, csrdata.doc, cordata.doc, and cprdata.doc. If you have Windows 7, you can also use the tilde (~) wildcard character along with greater than (>) and less than (
