In iManager, some characters have special significance and must be escaped with the backslash (\) character:
NDAP (eDirectory):
Period (.)
Equal sign (=)
Plus sign (+)
Backslash (\)
LDAP:
Distinguished names (DNs) and = + \ @; < >
Leading #
Leading or trailing spaces
For LDAP, any character can be specified with \xx. See RFC 2253 for more information.