Follow this link:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/desktopsearch/technicalresources/advquery.mspx
[EDIT: Moved to http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa965711(v=vs.85).aspx 
]
This should be included in Help and Support.
What is the syntax of Windows 7 file search (wildcards, logical signs...) ?__
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Anonymous
Hello,
I am looking for it everywhere but I can't find it.
When in Windows search and you are looking for a file, you can type in *.txt to look for a '.txt' file.
But it seems that the syntax of file name to look seems more complex that it looks first.
For instance, the quote character (") and the equal sign (=) seem to have there own significance.
And I think I have heard that it was possible to use 'not' and 'and ' signs.
Please, where can I find the complete syntax of the search paterns?
Thank you a lot
Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Files, folders, and storage
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Anonymous
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Anonymous
2012-02-08T12:53:54+00:00 file:"~"
finds files whose name starts with ~
Noel
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Anonymous
2012-02-07T23:48:37+00:00 All I want to do is use a wildcard to find filenames. I'm not interested in the content or type of the files. For example, suppose I want to find (to delete) all the Word system files that are opened when you open a Word .doc file but haven't been closed when the .doc file is closed. If the .doc file is, say, example.docx, the system file will be called ~xample.docx (or ~$ample.docx). So I want to put in a query using wildcards like this... ~*.* . But this search will find ALL files - the tilde (~) isn't recognised.
How can I do the search I want?
The old search method had no problem doing what I want.
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Anonymous
2011-10-19T14:56:06+00:00 This one helped me.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa965711(v=VS.85).aspx
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Anonymous
2011-10-05T09:11:43+00:00 adding list options to the search box
With so many file properties/attributes available for searching, any selection box system would probably be even more confusing. You can see a selection (287 of them) of searchable attributes in Explorer by right-clicking on a column heading in Details view and then clicking More...
providing decent, findable, online documentation.
It looks as if many of the links given in this and other threads have broken. The syntax is pretty well described in this article: Advanced Query Syntax.
This blog post gives a quick introduction.
Noel