You can use case, parentheses, and multiple words in character strings.

Case — Character string search conditions are case-sensitive. For example, if you enter Franklin as a search condition, QBF displays only records with Franklin, but not FRANKLIN or franklin.

Parentheses — If a character string contains a literal parenthesis, you must enclose the entire string in quotation marks. For example, to retrieve the record for Martin (E) Smith, enter Martin (E) Smith.

Multiple Words in Character Fields — If a character field contains two or more words separated by spaces, such as a street address, you must either use a pattern-matching wild card character, as explained in Using Pattern-Matching Characters, or enclose a multi‑word search condition in quotation marks.

For example, suppose you want to find records with a value of 1776 Adams Street in the Address column. You could do this by entering 1776 Adams Street as a search condition in the Address field.

However, if you enter 1776 Adams Street with no quotation marks as a search condition in the Address field, nothing is found because QBF interprets the spaces between the three words as implied AND operators.

As explained in the section on pattern-matching, you could also use a wild card character. For example, entering a search condition of 1776* finds all addresses on all streets beginning with 1776. Entering a search condition of 1776 Adams St* finds both 1776 Adams St. and 1776 Adams Street.