to search for special characters, put a "\" in front of them when forming the pattern to match:
e.g. "\." finds a single period. "\^" finds the "^" character, etc. without escaping them, they have a special meaning, e.g. "." means any character. Right-click on match pattern..Select "help". On the help page, click on "special charaters" for more details (green link under description for the "match pattern" terminal.
