Puzzled by wildcard search

I'm using Word 2003 on Windows XP, trying to search for strings like:

AB-1s
AB-1,2's
AB-2,3a's

I tried the following:

AB-[! ]{1,10}s
AB-?{1,10}s

Neither seem to work, though according to my reading of the Help, it
should. Is there something I'm misunderstanding about the Help, or
does Wildcards just not work as described in the Help?

Paul wrote:
I'm using Word 2003 on Windows XP, trying to search for strings like:

AB-1s
AB-1,2's
AB-2,3a's

I tried the following:

AB-[! ]{1,10}s
AB-?{1,10}s

Neither seem to work, though according to my reading of the Help, it
should. Is there something I'm misunderstanding about the Help, or
does Wildcards just not work as described in the Help?

The problem appears to be the separate letter s at the end of the
expression. Instead, the following seems to do the job:

AB-[! ^13]{1,10}

The ^13 included with the space in the [! ^13] means that the matched text
can't include a paragraph mark.

This is a wrinkle I hadn't seen before. You'll find an expanded discussion
of the wildcard search rules at
http://www.gmayor.com/replace_using_wildcards.htm.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

On Aug 10, 4:34*pm, "Jay Freedman" wrote:
Paul wrote:
I'm using Word 2003 on Windows XP, trying to search for strings like:

* AB-1s
* AB-1,2's
* AB-2,3a's

I tried the following:

* AB-[! ]{1,10}s
* AB-?{1,10}s

Neither seem to work, though according to my reading of the Help, it
should. *Is there something I'm misunderstanding about the Help, or
does Wildcards just not work as described in the Help?

The problem appears to be the separate letter s at the end of the
expression. Instead, the following seems to do the job:

AB-[! ^13]{1,10}

The ^13 included with the space in the [! ^13] means that the matched text
can't include a paragraph mark.

This is a wrinkle I hadn't seen before. You'll find an expanded discussion
of the wildcard search rules athttp://www.gmayor.com/replace_using_wildcards.htm.

Unfortunately, not having the "s" diminishes the usefulness of the
wildcard search in particular instance. Thanks for the link, though,
it was very informative.