What is the escape character for filters?

[JenM]

I am using a column of data in a slicer , and the column contains a few garbage records that consist only of the ? character (a single ?).

I've had no luck trying to figure out what, if any, character will allow me to escape the wildcard meaning of ?, and literally search for (well, filter out) strings containing '?'.

Perhaps an escape character hasn't even been defined, but I can't find any documentation on the subject.

[Sean · Accepted solution]

If you want to find an actual question mark or asterisk, type a tilde (~) before the character.

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee634235.aspx

[Sean · Accepted solution]

If you want to find an actual question mark or asterisk, type a tilde (~) before the character.

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee634235.aspx

[JenM]

@Sean Fabulous, thank you! That does the trick exactly!

(OK, I'm embarrased, I didn't think to search actual  Microsoft documentation...)

[blopez11 · Accepted solution]

If you want to filter out non printable characters, in the query editor, select your column, then in the Transform tab, select Format/Clean in the Text Column area, then if you want to then remove blank columns, you can apply a filter

Not sure if this is what you are looking for

[JenM]

@blopez11 Actually, this is what I originally wanted, but had forgotten/given up on, as I am using SSAS Tabular, via Visual Studio... I'd completely forgotten that I could filter data there, in the processing stage.

Then I had to remember that filtering data in the grid view (not sure of the proper name) was purely cosmetic, and wouldn't impact the deployed SSAS cube... So I had to work upstream, and apply the filter in the Edit Table Properties dialog.

Problem solved!