um, not sure about this. it seems to be working differently in different places.
i primarily use logins and have very few notes items in my vault, but i do have some login items with text in the notes fields and custom fields added and filled.
i have a login called “router”. searching for “out” returns this as a result. great substring matches seem to work. inside the notes field of “router” i have written “teest”. searching for “tee” returns no results, but searching for “teest” hits this as a result. i have another login item that has a custom text field labeled “address” with content of “outdated”. searching for anything between “a” and “addres” does not return this login item as a result; only “address” will correctly return this as a result. same for searches with “outdated”; i get partial matches with “out” in “router”, but nothing short of “outdated” will return the login item with the “outdated” “address”.
i would really like to see robust search capabilities that are consistent across all fields and item types, so that i can get expected results consistently across all items with only partial inputs.
edit: just found out about the “advanced searches” (https://help.bitwarden.com/article/searching-vault/) and the behavior i see is expected given the implementation according to the help/knowledge-base article. and i think the op’s request is satisfied using advanced search. not as quick or convenient as might be wished, but that is often one of the trade-offs with robust function.