"R.Wieser" wrote:
Apd,
If you precede it by a backslash ("\" is often used as an escape char)
it works

Bummer, it doesn't on XP(sp3). :-\

Indeed, I've just tried it.

By the way, it throws the same complaint when using "!" or "#" as the first
char ...

It's as if it detects an advanced query syntax and tries to hand it
to the indexing service. However, while "@" and "#" are mentioned as
special chars in the service, so are some others and they work fine in
a normal search. Perhaps it's a bug.