Tipp for working with filters / text-filters in Microsoft Excel

For some database related work / spreadsheet work I had to find a way in Excel's text filter system to escape characters. Specifically: it you need to know exactly what to type in when you want to look for example for the character "?" in an Excel column or range.Here is how you do it (I explain it on the example of Excel's auto filtering):

• select the range or columns
• Ribbon Data > hit Filter button
• Click the little down triangle on the column / header of the column you need to filter
• Enter "Text filters" e.g. "Contains"
• In the dialogue 'contains what'.. enter ~ ? for example (to search for actual ? characters