In 5.2 [1], wildcard match was added to be interoperable with Excel's matching syntax (and 5.3 made it default [2]). But the help still does not explain what wildcards are - see e.g. MATCH [3], which does not provide a clickable link on "wildcards"; and typing "wildcards" in help search gives a link to regular expressions [4] - even the help entry name in the right-hand "Contents" panel is "Using Wildcards in Text Searches". We have an issue which mentions the need to provide help for wildcards in Find & Replace (bug 103587); this one is not related to F&R, but for spreadsheet functions. Note how the term "wildcards" is confusing - e.g., it's used in bug 91336 to denote regular expressions. [1] https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/5.2#Support_wildcards_to_be_compatible_with_XLS.2FXLSX_and_with_ODF_1.2 [2] https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/5.3#Option_settings [3] https://help.libreoffice.org/latest/en-US/text/scalc/01/04060109.html?DbPAR=CALC#bm_id3158407 [4] https://help.libreoffice.org/latest/en-US/text/swriter/guide/search_regexp.html#bm_id3150099
FTR: release notes for 5.2 document the wildcard syntax; related MS documentation is at [1] (it tells it is related to filters - see bug 121854 - and searches), and also in related spreadsheet function documentation: e.g., [2] for MATCH. [1] https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/using-wildcard-characters-in-searches-ef94362e-9999-4350-ad74-4d2371110adb [2] https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/match-function-e8dffd45-c762-47d6-bf89-533f4a37673a
I included some (hopefully) useful material about wildcards in the 7.0 Calc Guide. This could be used as the basis of a help page on the topic.
Mike and Steve, I'll work on this one. I'll soon provide a help page about Wildcards in Calc. The info available in the guide was very helpful in understanding this issue.
Rafael Lima committed a patch related to this issue. It has been pushed to "master": https://git.libreoffice.org/help/commit/d42ad54f4c9c1b07ca851ce76ceb77f512c4f1ba tdf#142574 Create help page on "wildcards"
The new help page is available in: https://help.libreoffice.org/7.3/en-US/text/scalc/guide/wildcards.html?DbPAR=CALC#bm_id3152149 Setting it to FIXED.