How to search for files containing special characters in the filenames in Windows

[Mave]

Problem I stumbled upon today: I needed to filter out files with a comma , and ampersand &.
Simply entering these in the search bar inside the folder does not work. The solution however is pretty easy.

To search for files with special characters in the filenames you need to escape the characters.
Instead of searching , search for ~=",". Precede the special character with ~= and place it between double quotes "".
That's it!

Want to search for files containing &? Use ~="&".
Want to search for files containing (? Use ~="(".
Want to search for files containing ?? Use ~="?".
etc.

 

[Stybar]

Hmm, now I'm curious if there are other query syntaxes for the searchbox...

 

[Mave]

Hmm, now I'm curious if there are other query syntaxes for the searchbox...

Yup, I also discovered last night how to exclude subfolder results from your search.

folder:"\Current_Folder_Name"
The double quotes are important here, without them it will not work.