Searches and filters look for the presence of the word or words or name(s) you specify, but do not exclude more words. There is no need to use wildcards to allow other words. It already happens. Searching for "word1 word2" would match "word1 word2 word3 ..." because it contains the search term.
Wildcads, if they did work, would only have been useful for matching characters WITHIN words or names. For example: "g*mail". That is, IF they allowed wildcards. Andy -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Gmail-Users" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/gmail-users. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
