How to filter by special characters (?, &, $, etc.) in Google Sheets

Google sheets doesn't work if your'e trying to filter by special characters.

For example, if you wnt to find all URLs in a column with a ? in them, you would naturally try this:

However it doesnt work. You can see it found "4" but there are WAY more than 4 rows with a ? in them.

Then, you might logically try this (which is already frustrating to have to think about):

but that still doesnt work (just shows everything)

What you have to do is use an "escape character" + this "filter by condition" area.

The escape character in almost everything in computer world is \, but of course Google chose not to use that (classic)...

The escape character for Google sheets is a tilde ~. (You put it before the character you are trying to escape)

So this example would be:

and tada!

1000ish rows!

TLDR: Use FILTER BY CONDITION > TEXT CONTAINS and use a tilde escape character when searching for special characters.