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POWERBASE TUTORIAL 6

by Laurie Jane Kern  

Searching: Find, Filter and Groups - A lesson in 3 parts

Tutorial 6a - Find

 

I have added some names to the Sample Address Book and modified the contact types of the existing records so the information fits into this series of lessons. I have also removed the extra tables from the last lesson. Please download the most recent copy of the Sample AdBook(06)

You have all probably used the Find Editor in the onboard DATA application, and I hope you have used it in PowerBase too. You know from this, that Find is used to match words, numbers or parts of words (also known as strings).  PowerBase has some extra features you may not be aware of, so let's start with a review of how Find works in PowerBase and move on from there.

Open the Contacts Table in the List or Card View: you should have 12 records. Take a quick look at the new names in the database just so you are familiar with the data you are going to be working with. Notice that several of the telephone numbers are not for the UK and do not start with  +44. Also read the notes on several of the entries, you should see the words EPOC, Psion and Geofox in a few of them.

Now make sure the focus is on the chosen View and then press the ESC key. The cursor should now be in the Find Editor. Enter in the Editor the number 44 and press Enter. The view should now show 1 of only 8 records. Now erase the 44 and press Enter, this will return you to All Records. [Any time you wish to return to All Records, just delete the search string and press Enter - you can find this tip, along with others from these tutorials on the Hints and Tips page]. Now enter the word EPOC and press Enter. What do you see in the view? Nothing! There are NO records returned. Why is that? Well; when you set up your database (in Tutorial 3) and were building your Fields for the Contacts Table you set Properties for each Field. On the Attributes Tab of the Properties dialog box there is a check box that reads: Search when 'Finding'. This is set to YES for most of our Fields except for the Notes Field. (If you would like to check this, open the Schema and double click the Field for Notes) That is why it will find the 44 but not the word EPOC. Find is looking in all the Fields where this property is YES, so it will find 8 records where there are two 4's next to each other. But it won't look in the Notes Field, and since the word EPOC is not in any other Field, the find comes up empty! 

Remove the word EPOC from the Find Editor and press Enter: all 12 records should be visible once again. Now enter +44 and press Enter: there should be only 7 records now. As you can see, Find will look for the string you enter, and since only 7 records match +44 and 8 records had a match for 44, this means that one of the 8 records that has a 44 does not have a +. Can you find that record? [It is the record for Geofox; at the end of the work telephone number you will find the other 44].

What if you don't want to find a 44 positioned anywhere in the Field? What if you only want to locate 44 at the start of the string? Well, as I mentioned, PowerBase does some things which DATA can't, when it comes to using Find! Make sure the cursor is in the Find Editor, then press CTL+I or go to File|Properties, you should see the dialog box below.

tut601.gif (15793 bytes)

You can configure the following options with the Find Properties dialog box -

1. Which Fields to search when matching records:

All displayed Fields. Only the Fields displayed in the current View are searched.
All fields.  All fields will be searched even if they are not in the current View.
Only the currently selected Field (this column only)


PowerBase will also obey the Field attribute mentioned above 'Search when finding'. And Find will not search embedded Fields.

2. What rule to use when matching:

Contains. A record is considered a match when any of the Fields contains the text.
Does not contain. A record is considered a match when none of the Fields contains the text.
Starts with. A record is considered a match when at least one of the Fields has data that starts with the text.
Does not start with. A record is considered a match when none of the Fields start with the text

3. Case sensitive. This can be used to search using the case you entered, or it can be set to ignore the case.

4. Auto Find time. This feature sets the time delay for scrolling through records with the fast forward and rewind buttons. These are the >> and << button on the bottom tool bar.

5. History list size. This sets the number of Find entries to store in the History list. You can see this list by pressing the button just to the right of the Find Editor.

So if you use Find and your search comes up empty, check the Find Properties dialog box to make sure everything is set the way you want. I will leave you with the task of exploring how our +44 and 44 results would change as a result of altering the search and rule settings mentioned above.

Let me close this lesson by saying that Find is a great fast tool. As you saw, it can easily locate all telephone numbers that start with +44, or are in the UK, or a known Last Name such as Austen. You can do a general Find when you need to locate one or more record in the database and are willing to look a bit further if more than one record is returned.

As you discovered above, Find can be limited to one Field. But what if you want to do a Find using two Fields? Well that is where a Filter comes in and you will be looking at that next. Another question! What happens if you want to save your Find? The Find list will 'save' x number of previous Finds as shown above in the properties dialog box. Well a Group is a saved Find or Filter, and you will learn about Groups in part three of this lesson.

Keep the Sample Ad Book(06) for the next part of the tutorial.

© LJKern and FoxPop 1999

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