What is the use of a wildcard character in Access queries?

Wildcard characters in Access queries serve the purpose of representing unspecified characters, allowing for more flexible searching within your data. This functionality is particularly beneficial when you are searching for data that may not conform to a strict pattern or when you have incomplete information about the content you are seeking.

For example, using a wildcard can enable you to find all records that start with a specific string but may have varying endings, or to locate records that contain a certain substring anywhere within them. The most commonly used wildcard characters in Access are the asterisk (*) and the question mark (?). The asterisk represents any number of characters, while the question mark represents a single character. This flexibility enables users to extract relevant records that might otherwise be missed if only exact matches were used.

This capability greatly enhances the effectiveness of queries by allowing users to refine searches based on partial or incomplete information, catering to a variety of searching needs in a dynamic database environment.