For a project, I want to be able to create a dataset of tweets containing some particular string of symbols. Since I would also like to go as far back in time as possible, I tried using the GetOldTweets script ( <https://github.com/Jefferson-Henrique/GetOldTweets-python> ) mentioned here: <https://stackoverflow.com/a/35077920/5858873> .

The issue is, it isn't able to extract tweets containing symbols as input. In fact, one cannot even search directly on Twitter for any tweets consisting of required symbols.

To more clearly explain the problem, consider the following sample case. I would l like to extract all tweets containing the string '!!!' within the last two years. 

What is the best way to do this (if this even is doable)?