You can use any reasonable date format to find information in a date field. Example: A search for June 1995 or 6-95 will find the following:
June '95 12-Jun-95
June 3, 1995 6/95
JUN-1995 6/30/95
1995, June June 1995
You can type a year alone (to retrieve all dates within that year), a year and month (to find dates in that month), or a year, month and day. Punctuation between these elements is optional, but you should avoid slash (/) because it will be interpreted as a Boolean symbol, unless the date is surrounded with quotation marks.
Use comparison or range operators to find dates before or after a particular date, or falling within a specified period. If you use comparison operators with a partial date, the search proceeds from the beginning of the period indicated. For example, <1995 find dates in 1994 and earlier, but a search for >1995 includes dates in 1995. Range searches involving partial dates find everything from the beginning of the first date period to the end of the second. For example, a search for Jan 96:Mar 96 finds everything in January, February, and March of 1996.
This method will not work to find dates embedded in text. There, date information is treated as a series of words and can be retrieved in a phrase search, but the format must match. A search for 6-95 will not find June, 1995 embedded in other text.