
Access won’tĭoesn’t have a space character before the accessīlock. You might not expect that search string to return Access 97, but the absence of the word accessing might be a surprise. For instance, the following statement matches Microsoft Access but not Access Includes a space character between the literal characters and the * character,Īccess will return only those entries that include a space character in that Position, pay close attention to space characters. When using the * character to match characters in a specific The following statement would return MicrosoftĪccess but not Access 97 or accessing: Like "*Access" # 2: Spaces matter in a * match This statement would return Access 97 and accessing So it would return the following entries: Microsoft Access, Access 97, and accessing.ĭrop the first * character to match entries that begin with Instance, the following statement would return any entry that contains the Matches any character or any block of characters in a specific position. The most flexible wildcard character is the asterisk (*).

# 1: Match characters in a specific position Mistake visually, the erroneous data could go undetected for a long time–longĮnough to corrupt your data or even your entire application. If you use the wrong character, a query will almostĬertainly return erroneous data. The ability to find and retrieve data easily is great, but You can also use them to lookįor a specific record when you can’t remember enough information to retrieve With similar, but not exactly the same, information. You can use wildcards to find many records

This article is also available as a PDF download.Ī wildcard is a special character that can represent one or

These tips will help you wield wildcards more effectively. But if you don't use the right wildcard characters the right way, you could wind up with the wrong data-a potentially app-corrupting nightmare. Wildcards come in handy when you need to locate records with similar data or you're trying to track down a specific record based on limited information. 10 tips for using wildcard characters in Microsoft Access criteria expressions
