Spring:
Enrolled:150
Dropped:9
Cancelled:1
Re-Enter:10

Summer: Ect…

This is a common source of confusion. You can only use the Perform Find step all by itself if your find is based on static data, but in your case, you want to find based on data from a global field. This requires a little more scripting. (Note that in FileMaker 11, it is possible to use a variable in a find request, which is another way to do what you want. But I find it more confusing, and anyway, since I don’t know what version of FileMaker you’re using, I’ll show you the way that will work in any version.)

As you guessed, the right approach is for your script to do these steps explicitly:

1: Enter find mode
2: Set up the find request(s)
3: Perform the find

To turn on the “omit” checkbox for a find request, you simply run the “Omit Records” script step. When you’re in browse mode, this step actually removes records from the found set. But in find mode, it toggles the Omit checkbox.

Also, you should generally avoid using copy/paste in your scripts because it modifies the user’s clipboard, which can be irritating for your users. When trying to put data into a field in a script, you almost always want the Set Field script step instead. Since it doesn’t make sense to search global fields, you will have full access to your global field while in find mode.

So here is a script that will do what you want:

Enter Find Mode
Set Field [project, current project]
New Record/Request
Omit Record
Set Field [done, done]
Perform Find []

That should do the trick.

Geoff

This does seem weird at first, but here’s what’s really happening. FileMaker builds an index of the values in a field to make searching faster. Only certain characters are included in this index (all the letters and numbers, and some punctuation). The @ symbol is not indexed. So when you search for @something FileMaker looks in the index for {some letter}something and doesn’t find it because the index just has something (the @ was stripped).

When you do a literal text search with quotation marks, FileMaker alters its matching behavior to include special characters.

The exact characters that are included in the index depend on the default language you set in the storage options for a field. If you set this to “Unicode” then the @ symbol will be indexed (along with just about everything else). But this has the unfortunate side effect of making the index case-preserving too, so your searches will be case sensitive.

And now I’ve said more than you ever wanted to know

Geoff

Try this out, @svend!

then searching for:

@svend

doesn’t work, though searching for the literal:

“@svend”

does.

This is in FM11.0v2, though; it might not happen with earlier versions.

You can do this with two find requests:

1: Enter Find Mode
2: Put “dog” in your field
3: Choose Requests => New Request
4: Put “cat” in the same field that had dog before
5: Click the “Omit” checkbox or button in the status toolbar

When you run this find, it will find records with dog, but not cat. See http://sixfriedrice.com/wp/the-secret-life-of-find-mode-omit/ for more.

Geoff

Is there any way to easily do a search that compares values in two fields and displays records where they match? For example, I have a database that contains two price fields. Let’s call them price1 and price2. I want to perform a find that results in all records where price1=price2.

Anyone know how to do this?