Find File Containing Text Field: Only Special Characters Work

• Microsoft Word for Windows, versions 6.0, 6.0a, 6.0c

SYMPTOMS

When you try to search for certain characters in summary fields in the Advanced Search criteria of File Find, Word reports "No matching files found," even if files containing those characters exist in the directory.

The reserved characters that Word doesn't find include the question mark (?), asterisk (*), quotation mark ("), backslash (\), ampersand (&), tilde (~), and space ( ). If you try to search for any of these characters by typing a backslash before it, as suggested in Online Help, Word will not find the file.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in Word for Windows versions 6.0, 6.0a, and 6.0c. This is not a problem with Word version 6.0 for the Macintosh and Word version 7.0 for Windows 95.

WORKAROUND

To work around this problem, search for the characters using the Containing Text field.

REFERENCES

For information on the special characters that can be used with the Containing Text field, search in Help for "Special characters", and then select "Using special characters in a document search."