I apologize if this is covered somewhere else, I tried a bunch of searches but couldn't find any info about this.

I have field with pathnames in my database, and I'd like to find the records that the pathname field does NOT end with ".mp4" So I went to "Find" and chose to "omit", and typed *.mp4 in my "Pathname" field (text). What I got was all the records that do not end in .mp4 AND any file that had number or a symbol anywhere else in the field.

This is not helpful. (I thought the * wildcard was supposed to be any character not just letters?)

I just want to omit anything ending in ".mp4" any ideas?

What is the field's type?

What I got was all the records that do not end in .mp4 AND any file that had number or a symbol anywhere else in the field.

For example?

What is the field's type?

Text

When I omit *.mp4 I get back:

file.pdf

info.txt

something.log

movie2.mp4

2days.mp4

day-night.mp4

My current solution is I made another field called ExtensionCheck which auto calculates itself to be the last 3 letters of my pathname field and I can now omit mp4 on that field without having to use a wildcard. But this solution is not pretty and it feels like a clumsy solution. Anyone got a better idea?

I cannot reproduce your results with "2days.mp4" or "day-night.mp4". Check your data on those.

Regarding "movie2.mp4": the dot here is a word separator, so there are no words that end with ".mp4". You could search for *mp4 - but this would find records that contain ANY word that ends with "mp4" such as "lamp4.doc". So eventually you should be searching for:

==*.mp4

Okay ==* solved the issue.

I went back and expanded out the field to see the whole file name you were correct all of my problem files ended in a #:

DogStar2.mp4

DogStar3.mp4

DogStar4.mp4

DogStar5.mp4

21-87.mp4

short films 1975 #9.mp4

Thank you very much, I wouldn't have figured that one out on my own.