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Release: Australia · Updated: 2026-03-12 · Official documentation · View source

Wildcard characters allow searching for patterns and variations

Expand search results to match any non-space character. Zing supports both single-character and multiple-character wildcards.

The following searches support Zing wildcard characters.

  • Global text search
  • Knowledge Base

    Note: Users with the admin role can enable wildcard search in the Knowledge context by navigating to All > Contextual Search > Search Contexts, editing the Knowledge Base Search record, and selecting the Enable wildcard searches check box.

  • Search a list

    Note: To perform a wildcard text search of a list, you must select for text as the search field. If you select a list field instead of for text, wildcard characters in search terms will be interpreted as list search wildcards (for non-reference fields) or as auto-complete wildcards (for reference fields).

To perform a single-character wildcard search, use the percent sign (%) character. This wildcard finds words that contain any one character in place of the percent-sign-character. For example, to find words such as text or test, search for te%t.

To perform a multiple-character wildcard search, use the asterisk (*) character. This wildcard finds words that contain zero or more characters in place of the asterisk-character. For example, to find words such as planned or placed, search for pl*d.

You can use wildcard characters anywhere in a search string, and can include multiple wildcards in the same word. For example, to find words including affordable, effort, and offering, search for %ff%r*.

If a wildcard search returns too many hits, the system displays a message asking you to refine the search. Administrators can set a global text search property to change the limit for wildcard search results.

Note: Wildcard text searches are only effective with multiple character words. A wildcard within a sequence of pictogram characters returns too many options for an efficient search. Wildcards are best used with letter-based words.

Wildcard characters and synonym matching

Zing doesn't expand the % and * wildcard characters when looking for synonyms that match your search term. These characters are treated as literal characters when finding matching synonyms. As an example, if you search for issu*, Zing doesn't find synonyms for issue, but it does find synonyms for issu*.

Parent Topic:Available search options

Related topics

List search finds records from the current table

Boolean operators allow conditional search results

Quotation marks allow exact phrase searches

Enable or disable the Zing junk filter

Debug Zing