Wildcard Search

Wildcard searches employ special symbols that stand for one or more 'unknown' characters and apply only to the items in the word list.

You may wish to use wildcard search in the following situations:

• you do not know the exact spelling of a word
• you wish to create a list of words with a specific root, prefix or postfix

Wildcard characters

Wildcard search uses two wildcard characters: ? and *.

• The ? character stands for any character.
  Thus, a wildcard search for we?t will find weet, weft, welt, went, wept, west.

• The * character stands for any sequence of characters (or no characters at all).
  Thus, a wildcard search for summ*r will find both words, e.g. summer and summator,  and set expressions, e.g. summable filter, summing counter, etc.

Running a wildcard search:

To run a wildcard search in all the enabled dictionaries of the current dictionary group:

1. In the search field, type the necessary pattern using wildcard characters.
2. Do one of the following:
   • Select the Wildcard Search command on the Translate menu
   • Press Ctrl+F3
3. In the Wildcard Search Results dialog box that opens, review the list of matches and click the word or phrase that you wish to look up.
   The maximum number of search results displayed in the Wildcard Search Results dialog box is 1000.

Note: To move to the next link in the dialog box, use Tab. To follow the link, press Enter.