I have developed following escape function that work fine with gridview rowfilter: public static string Escape(string aString) { string searchStr = Regex.Replace(aString, "[.']", "''"); searchStr = Regex.Replace(searchStr, "[.]]", "[]]"); searchStr = Regex.Replace(searchStr, "[.[]", "[[]"); searchStr = Regex.Replace(searchStr, "[.*]", "[*]"); searchStr = Regex.Replace(searchStr, "[.%]", "[%]"); return searchStr; } Before passing string to rowfilter just escape your search string with above function. Should work:thumbsup: