Access Wildcards

To access wildcards in workd press Ctrl+H OR

Go to
Home tab,
Editing group,
select Find > Advanced Find
This brings Find & Replace screen. Now Click the More button (after click it changes to Less
button) to open the window for additional options. Under Search Options, check the box beside
Use Wildcards.

Then In the "Find What" field, put required search term (wildcard pattern) to search.

Wildcard characters for Access queries

Regex
Character Description Example
equivalent
Matches any number of characters (0 or wh* finds what, white, .*
* more). Asterisk (*) can be used and why, but not awhile
anywhere in a character string. or watch.
 Regex
Character Description Example
equivalent
Matches any single character, including .
b?ll finds ball, bell, and
? space and punctuation characters in a
bill.
specific position.
Matches one of the listed characters b[ae]ll finds ball and []
[]
within the brackets. bell, but not bill.
Expression. This allows to nest search <(pre)*(ed)> to find (?:)
()
expressions within a search term. presorted and prevented
b[!ae]ll finds bill and [^]
bull, but not ball or bell.
[!] Excludes characters inside the brackets.
Like [!a]* finds all
items that do not begin
with the letter a.
Matches any single character in a range same
of characters. Remember to specify the b[a-c]d finds bad, bbd,
-
characters in ascending order (A to Z, not and bcd.
Z to A).
1#3 finds 103, 113, and .
# Matches any single numeric character.
123.
An escape character. To search for one of \
the wildcard characters use a forward /? Finds a question
/
slash (/) in front of the character to find mark.
it.
<(inter) finds ^
< This indicates beginning of a word. interesting and intercept,
but not splintered.
(in)> finds in and $
> This indicates end of a word. within, but not
interesting.
Exactly n occurrences of the previous fe{2}d finds feed but not {n}
{n}
character or expression fed.
Adding a , after the number tells Word {n, }
{4, } finds four or more
{n, } to look for at least that number of
of the letter a in a row
occurrences.
From n to m occurrences of the 10{2,3} finds 100, and {n,m}
{n,m}
previous character or expression 1000 but not 10.
@ One or more occurrences of the previous lo@t finds lot, loot and +
character or expression loooot.
For example to Find Acronyms: In the "Find What" field, put this phrase: <[A-Z]{2,}>