There are several approaches and tools out there that you can implement to add wildcard functionality into SharePoint, and most of them are without cost or obligation.
- Ramon Scott has posted a walkthough on how to configure wildcard searches yourself in your SharePoint environment. Be sure to check out the post's comments for additional information and a link to another post Ramon wrote on the subject - http://www.ramonscott.com/wordpress/?p=8
- Corey Roth has contributed a free wildcard search add-on for MOSS to CodePlex. As with all CodePlex applications its support is going to be limited, but it is a full 1.0 release of the component and it appears that Corey is still making updates to the project - http://www.codeplex.com/WildcardSearch
- Ontolica Search offers a free wildcard search add-on, with no restrictions on its use. I don't know what kind of support they offer it, and you will have to provide them marketing contact information in order to download it, just as an FYI - http://www.ontolica.com/Ontolica%20for%20MOSS%202007/Ontolica%20Wildcard.aspx/
- There's also another project for MOSS wildcard search on CodePlex you can check out (tip of the hat to Paul Galvin for finding this): http://www.codeplex.com/SPWildCardSearch/
I don't have any personal experience with any of these options, so I can't really recommend one over the other for you. Keep in mind that the two Codeplex projects are listed as MOSS only, and I don't know if the other two are compatible with WSS or not, so if you are running WSS you may not be able to implement any of them...
John
MCTS: WSS v3, MOSS 2007, and SCOM 2007
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The SharePoint 2007 Disaster Recovery Guide.
Wildcard search 3rd party addon