How can I search for a string spanning multiple lines in the formattersearch?

We use foswiki as our internal team tool. While creating a formatted search we need to search over terms that span multiple lines in the pages.. for example:

<verbatim>

|this is a sample line

spans multiple lines..|

</verbatim>

Now when searching for the text between the pipes, the regex fails due to the newline.

How can I search over multiple lines in formatted search?

What we tried:

[\n]*, $n.

Please guide.