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Posted February 19, 2021
Can wildcards be used when searching?
If the search is for Contains, Starts With, Ends With, or Like then some wildcards are supported:

Wildcard Description Example
% Matches 0 or more characters John% matches John, Johnson, Johnathan.
_ Matches any single character A__a matches Alma, Alva, Anna
[abc] Matches any character in the list [adl][aen]na matches Anna, Dana, Lena
[a-c] Matches any character in the range. Note: 0 is considered to come after the number 9. To get a range of 0-5 you would use [01-5]. [a-cy-z]% matches everything that starts with A, B, C, X, Y, or Z.

Wild cards can be mixed and matched:

[4-7]-1% matches anything that starts with 4, 5, 6, or 7 followed by a hyphen and 1 then any number of characters.  Depending on your account number setup, this type of search might find all Revenue and Expense accounts for your upper school.

[q-twzf-h]___ matches a 4 letter word that starts with F, G, H, Q, R, S, T, W, or Z.  Notice how you can have a mix of ranges and single characters within the same brackets.

When might you use wild cards?  
- Accounting can use wildcards to match all accounts.  Example: If you have a 6 digit account number, _3_5__  would find all accounts where the second digit is 3 and the 4th digit is 5.
- Searching for names where you don’t know the correct spelling.  Example:  You don’t know if the name is spelled Johnson, Jahnson, Jonson, Jonnson, or some other obscure spelling.  But you do know that it starts with a J and ends with son:  J%son
 
Update

Streamlined Selector and Widget Configuration

1 min read · Updated April 26, 2026

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