Using wildcards to search

You never need to enter a full name to search on, because by default, Synergetic assumes that you have typed in all or part of the beginning of the string of characters.

For example, searching in the Surname field for a student starting with the letters Li returns:

  • Liem, Luke
  • Lill, Vivien
  • Lim, Christopher
  • and so on.

Tip: The characters you enter are case sensitive. So, searching for Li is not the same as LI.

You can also search using the % symbol in a string as a wildcard or LIKE parameter. When searching by name (given, preferred, surname and so on), you can use the % wildcard to match all those records containing only the letters that you entered.

Depending on the placement of the %, you can return many different matches from the database.

Placing the percent symbol (%) first (before a string of characters you have entered) returns any surnames that match the characters that you entered. These can be either on the end or in the middle of the surname.

For example, search for surname %es returns:

  • Barnes, Domenic
  • Bates, Adele
  • Best, Amy
  • Bowes, Charles
  • Weston, Julie
  • Weekes, Craig
  • and so on.